


UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



MORAL PHILOSOPHY: 



EXTRACTS FROM 



05 









/ 



JOUFFEOY 



' 



TRANSLATED BY 

ROBERT H". TOPPAN. 










0? *** 



NEW YORK: 

W. H. TIXSOX, PRINTER, 43 & 45 CENTRE STREET. 



tM> 



1862. 



^g^rH/J.s'SfZ- 






Entered according to Act of Congress, In the year 1862, by 
ROBERT K TOPPAN, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern 

District of New i'ork. 



2-/ ht>% 



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PREFACE. 



The following translation contains three 
extracts from' the philosophical writings of 
Jouffroy, one of the most profound of the 
French philosophers of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, and a pupil of the celebrated Cousin. 

The first extract, the " Problem of Human 
Destiny/' is taken from the " Melanges Philo- 
sophiques." 

The second extract, treating of the "Moral 
Facts of Human Nature," has been previously 
translated by the Rev. William H. Channing;. 

The third extract, contains Jouffroy's "The- 
oretical Views w of Morality. 

The three extracts taken together, form a 
complete whole. The first lays down the 
problem of human destiny, and shows that 
the problem can only be solved philosophi- 



IV PBBFACE. 

cally by a study of the facts of human nature. 
The second gives a description of the moral 
facts of human nature. The moral facts of 
human nature being ascertained, the third 
extract gives us the moral law that we ought 
to obey, in order to accomplish as fully as 
possible our destiny in this world. 

Although knowing that the translation is 
not what it might be, and that it contains 
many imperfections, the translator still hopes 
that it may give to the students of philosophy 
in this country some knowledge of a writer 
so little known to us and yet so deserving of 
our attention. 

Robert N. Toppa^. 



CONTENTS. 



LECTURE I. 

PAGB 

The Problem of Human Destint, 7 

LECTURE IL 
Method of Solving the Problem, 58 

LECTURE III. , 
The Moral Facts of Human Nature, ..... 99 

LECTURE IV. 
The Moral Facts of Human Nature Continued, . . 141 

LECTURE V. 
Theoretical Views, 171 

LECTURE VI. 
Theoretical Views Continued, . . . . . 204 

LECTURE VII. 
Theoretical Views Continued, 241 

LECTURE VIII. 
Theoretical Views Continued, 274 

LECTURE IX. 
Theoretical Views Continued, 312 



MORAL PHILOSOPHY, 



LECTURE L 

THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

The spectacle of tlie universe which surrounds us, 
and of the different beings which people it, create 
iii all men certain belieis, which arise, as it were, 
spontaneously, and which cannot be rejected when 
once created. As all beings which : fill the world 
have a fixed nature, it seems to us certain that this 
nature imposes a particular destiny upon each one 
of them, and as the world is itself harmonious* we 
believe that the particular destiny of each of these 
beings tends toward the destiny of the whole, and 
forms an element of universal order. Every being 
then appears to us to be consecrated by its organ- 
ization to a certain end. The accomplishment of 
this end is the part of each creature in this world, 
and from the combination of all these parts results 
the drama of the creation. What is the end of 
any given being? We may be ignorant of it ; but 



8 THE PJKOBLKM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

whether we know it or not, we still believe that 
the being 1ms an end, and that it is connected with 
the general harmony of the whole. As in a large 
machine, composed of a thousand wheels, we know 
that each wheel accomplishes a certain movement, 
and we believe that this movement contributes to 
the movement of the whole machine, so in this vast 
universe, peopled by so many different beings, we 
believe not only that each of these beings acts ac- 
cording to its nature, but also that its action is con- 
nected with the action of the whole. There is no- 
thing in the creation which we cannot subject to 
this law. We impose it not only on man, ani- 
mals and plants, but even on those objects which 
we call inanimate, but which in truth do not de- 
serve that name. The pebble which lies under my 
feet, has not been created in vain any more than I 
have ; its nature assigns it a part in the creation, 
and if its part is obscure, if it is less beautiful, less 
grand than mine, it is not accomplished the less, 
and does not the less tend toward the end estab- 
lished by the Creator when the world came freshly 
created from his hands. 

"Whence comes this belief ? This is not the pro- 
per place to make the inquiry ; but from whatever 
source it emanates, and in whatever way it causes 
itself to be received, the belief is always such as 
cannot be overcome. When we attempt to call in 



TUE PR03LEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 9 

doubt the twofold principle which I have just 
stated, we cannot do it. It stands firm in spile of 
all our efforts to eradicate it. Skepticism can well 
call in question the absolute truth of this principle ; 
it can affirm that if human intelligence had been 
made differently, this principle, which seems to us 
necessary, could seem to us absurd ; but this skepti- 
cism cannot do — it cannot destroy or weaken the 
authority of the principle. The skeptics them- 
selves, in the practical business of life, yield to the 
influence of the principle ; they believe and reason 
like the rest of mankind, and like the rest of men 
they attribute a particular destiny to each thing 
and search for it. Skepticism commits a great 
error : the question in philosophy is, not to know 
what truth would be if human understanding were 
differently made from what it is ; the question is 
to know what truth is for human understanding. 
To claim a higher truth is to claim what is impossi- 
ble ; for the understanding cannot cease being 
what it is, in order to decide what truth would be 
after this transformation. There is no other truth 
for man than human truth ; it is the only truth 
given him to attain. 

All beings have, then, their particular ends, 
which are imposed upon them by their nature, and 
because imposed upon them by their nature, they 
tend toward these ends with energy. This is 

1* 



10 THE mORLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

what all beings have in common; but the largest 
portion, while accomplishing their destiny, are ig- 
norant of it, and it is only given to a very small 
number to know that they have a destiny. This 
high privilege has been reserved to reasonable 
natures, and the only being endowed with reason 
that we know of is man. 

If you consider a mineral, you will perceive that 
it has two elements — the aggregate particles and 
the force which holds them together. The force 
is the constituent element, for it is that which 
causes the aggregation, and the mineral is that ag- 
gregation. We here see a principle which, by vir- 
tue of its nature, accomplishes a certain mission, 
which is its end. But this principle being without 
sensibility, and without intelligence, the end is ac- 
complished without its perceiving it or knowing it. 
"When its part is performed without hindrance, it 
does not rejoice ; when it meets with obstacles or 
is overcome by an external force, it does not suffer : 
and not only does it neither rejoice nor suffer 
in these two cases, because it is insensible ; but also 
because it is unintelligent, it does not even know 
that in the one case it accomplishes its destiny, and 
that in the other it is prevented from accomplish- 
ing its destiny ; it does not know that it has a des- 
tiny, still less what that destiny is. It is a blind 
actor, which plays its part without knowing it 5 



THE TROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 11 

without wishing it, and without knowing that it 
has a part, and that it fulfills it. 

In the plant the force has a more varied, richer, 
and stronger development. Its part is not limited 
to holding a certain number of material particles 
in an immovable aggregation. It takes possession 
of the bud, and calling to its aid all the friendly 
elements which nature has placed within its reach, 
like a skillful workman, it builds up and organizes 
a being which covers itself with leaves and fruits, 
which lives from its life and which distributes to 
the winds and the earth, to the waves and to na- 
ture, the seeds containing the germs of new beings 
resembling itself. Such is the more noble destiny 
of the plant, or of the principle which constitutes 
it. But the plant does all this also unconsciously : 
it is never anxious about its own destiny, because 
it is unintelligent. Does it, however, feel the axe 
that strikes it, the wind that breaks off its branches, 
the burning sun that dries up its roots ? We do 
not know. Some facts would seem to show a sort 
of dull sensibility in plants, which causes a slight 
tremulous motion when wounded in their most deli- 
cate organs ; but these indications prove nothing, 
and we ought rather to doubt them than be will- 
ing to attribute our life to all things, and to place 
the immense variety of created beings under the 
unitv of the law T s of our nature. In the animal, 



12 THE PBOBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

doubt is no longer permitted ; the principle which 
constitutes the animal is no longer a force foreign 
to itself and its acts, which by the combination of 
certain operations executed without being felt, 
without being known, and without being willed, 
accomplishes mechanically the end assigned it in 
the creation. From the fact alone that the ani- 
mal principle exists and exists in a certain way, 
like every other possible principle it is developed 
and aspires to its end ; but because it is sensible, 
it has a perception of these instinctive tendencies ; 
it feels them, they are desires ; and because they 
are felt, it rejoices when they are satisfied : when 
they are impeded it suffers. This is not all ; it has 
received from God an intelligence sufficient to 
recognize the object of its desires, and sufficient 
self-command to place voluntarily all its power at 
the service of its desires. The animal does not 
remain, then, like the plant, a stranger to what 
takes place within itself ; by virtue of this three- 
fold faculty which it has, it is given to the animal 
to participate in the accomplishment of its own 
destiny. But it is not given to the animal to com- 
prehend that it has a destiny, nor what that des- 
tiny is ; there is wanting for this purpose that 
superior degree of intelligence called reason, with- 
out which the understanding is reduced to a mere 
knowing without comprehending, and to serving 



THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 13 

as a slave in place of commanding as a master. 
In yielding to its desires, in discovering that which 
is proper for them, in endeavoring to satisfy these 
desires, the animal does not know what it is doing — 
it does not know that it is accomplishing its destiny ; 
still less does it comprehend that in accomplishing 
this destiny it plays a part in the universe. The 
idea of a destiny never presents itself to the animal ; 
the animal never proposes to itself for solution the 
problem of knowing what its destiny, and the des- 
tiny of the world, is. The noble but sad privilege 
of these lofty thoughts has been refused it ; its na- 
ture is incapable of it. 

It is entirely different with man. Man is also, 
by his constitution, predestined to a certain end. 
This destiny becomes apparent in him in the first 
place, as in animals, by w r ants, desires, and instinc- 
tive movements. Like them, he has a kind of in- 
telligence which serves to recognize the exis- 
tence of these desires and wants, as well as the 
objects which can satisfy them. He possesses also, 
like them, that sensibility which causes every cre- 
ated being to suffer when the propensities of its 
nature are thwarted, and to rejoice when they are 
gratified. Like them, also, he possesses the power 
of self-command, which permits him to employ 
voluntarily his energy in the pursuit of those ob- 
jects which his wants, his propensities and his 



14: THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN I'feSTINY. 

intelligence point out. But the faculties which 
Heaven has bestowed on man are not limited to 
this. He has received, besides, that higher under- 
standing called reason, through*which he compre- 
hends himself and those things which surround 
him, and the relations which exist between their 
nature and his. Man has not only the power to 
perceive and know those things which are good 
or bad for him, but he has also the faculty of com- 
prehending in what way and how these things 
have for him different qualities ; how it is that all 
things are not equally indifferent to him, and how 
there exists and can exist good and evil for him- 
self and all beings. In a word, man, in accom- 
plishing the destiny imposed upon him by his 
nature, has the power of comprehending that he has 
a destiny, that everything, and even the creation, 
has its destiny, and that the destiny of each created 
being is only a fragment of that of the whole crea- 
tion. If we review what we have just said, you will 
see, gentlemen, that it is sufficient for a thing to ex- 
ist, and exist in a certain way, in order to be destined 
to a certain development. This development is the 
same thing as the destiny of the being— a destiny 
resulting from its nature. The nature of beings 
without sensibility and intelligence is developed 
and tends toward its end without their perceiving 
or knowing it. The destiny of beings purely sen- 



THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 15 

sitive, if such exist, is accomplished like others, but 
when it is easily accomplished they rejoice, when 
it is accomplished with difficulty they suffer. The 
destiny of beings endowed with intelligence, but 
devoid of reason is also accomplished, but accom- 
plished with this difference, that the intelligence 
and the will assist as instruments. A new pheno- 
menon appears, however, in reasonable creatures : 
they not only rejoice or suffer according as their 
destiny is accomplished with ease or difficulty ; not 
only do they employ their intelligence and will in 
the accomplishment of their end, but they also 
comprehend that they have a destiny, and that it 
is the enigma called life. Such is the gradation 
presented by the different kind of beings compris- 
ing the creation. 

We must not, however, believe that man rises 
early to the conception of this grand thought, nor 
to the conception of those numerous problems 
which spring necessarily from it. Is'o, gentlemen, 
man is nothing but an animal for a long time ; to 
be sure, a more perfect animal than others, but one 
whose intelligence never rises, however, to any of 
those problems which are truly human, and which 
animals can never conceive or attempt to solve. 
During the whole of the first portion of his short 
career, man's life is a dream of which he knows 
nothing — a darkness, into which the light has 



16 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

never penetrated. Wants are created in him, cer- 
tain faculties appear and are developed. He is car- 
ried by these desires and by these faculties, toward 
certain objects ; his intelligence teaches him, with 
the assistance of experience, to recognize these 
objects, to satisfy these wants, to exercise and 
develop these faculties. He even succeeds — a 
thing which happens to animals in a very small 
degree — in combining all the possible means in his 
power in order to attain the most complete satisfac- 
tion of his desires, and the greatest development 
of his faculties. During a long time, how r ever, he 
does this unconsciously, and without asking himself 
why he does it. The phenomenon of reason con- 
ceiving the idea of destiny, conceiving that every- 
thing has an end, conceiving that man has his, and 
that this end has a necessary relation with that of 
the universe, this phenomenon appears in man after 
the lapse of a considerable time. The day on which 
it finally appears is a marked one — a day not to be 
forgotten : but this day is a long time in coming, 
and until it does come, it can be said that the life of 
man is only the life of an animal in its highest phase. 
It appears that the first portion of life, which is 
clearly that of the infant, is drawn out to a very 
great length among the common people, and that 
even, in a very large number, it occupies the w r hole 
of their existence. In fact, in casting our eyes 



THE TKOBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 17 

upon society which surrounds us, what do we see 
there? Where do we find men filled with the 
grand problem of human destiny — men whom this 
problem perplexes — men whom this problem agi- 
tates and elevates — men who give a single thought 
to it, and sjDend a single moment in its contempla- 
tion ? 

If each of us happens to know some such men, 
we know, also, that they exist in very small num- 
bers, and that the multitude which surrounds us is 
not composed of such materials. In looking upon 
the spectacle presented to us by this multitude, and 
the thousands of beings who live from day to day, 
pursuing the different objects of their passions, well 
satisfied when they have attained them, disap- 
pointed when unsuccessful in the pursuit ; but whe- 
ther happy or deceived, carried away continually 
by an ambition always new, by desires always 
young, and boldly playing their part without ever 
thinking to ask themselves the meaning of this 
play which gives them so much evil, and in which 
they figure, not knowing why — in seeing, I repeat, 
the reality of human life, we would believe that 
the high privilege of understanding that we have 
a destiny belongs less to humanity than to philoso- 
phy, and that, if this is the fact that distinguishes 
man from the animal, it is only by exception that 
he takes the higher rank accorded to him. 



18 1* OBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

We ;v with truth, gentlemen, that man 

does not rise to these high thoughts until late, and 
even whew he turns his mind to them, his interests 
and passions 60on get the uppermost, and tend con- 
stantly to n. ake him forget them. It is only in 
some extraordinary occasions, in some unusual eir- 
cumstances, that his mind is elevated to theee high 
thoughts. This is true of the generality of men, 
and this is also true of those educated minds, who 
are carried backward and forward, like other men, 
by the flow and ebb of circumstances, and who 
thus pass a large portion of their lives in yielding 
obedience to their nature, . without considering 
toward what they are driven. The fact is certain 
and incontestable, and yet there is not a man, I 
venture to say, no matter how poor by birth, how- 
little enlightened by society, how badly treated, so 
to speak, by nature, by fortune and his fellow 
beings, who does not one day or other in the_ course 
of his life, under the influence of some heavy calam- 
ity, propose to himself this fearful question which 
overhangs us all like a dark cloud — this decisive 
question, " Why is man here, and what is the mean- 
ing of the part he plays?" You, gentlemen, can 
testify to the truth of this assertion,, as the question 
I propose is one not unknown to you, for it is one 
known to every man who has had some experience 
of life, and who has had some suffering. It 



THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 19 

remains for us to learn what these circumstances 
are which take us from the rank of animals and 
elevate us to a thought, which is the thought of 
morality — the thought of humanity. 

It is evident that if man did not contain within 
himself those two principles which I stated at the 
beginning, man never would conceive the question, 
and would never propose it to himself. It is sim- 
ply because man is capable of comprehending that 
everything is created for a certain end, and that, 
in the whole universe, the end of each particular 
thing is connected with the end of. all, that man. is 
troubled about his own destiny, and the revelation 
existing between his destiny and that of the world. 
If you take away reason from man, and leave him 
only intelligence, placing him under the influence 
of any circumstance whatever, such a thought 
would never be suggested to him. Reason is born 
with men, but it lies dormant for some time, and 
requires violent shakings, if 1 can so express my- 
self, to wake it up, and cause it to display to view 
the principles which it contains. Up to this time, 
the principles exist as if they had no existence. 
Every man contains within himself from his 
infancy, the generating principles of the moral 
question, and yet this moral question does not 
arise until late, and seems hardly to arise at all in 
a large number of minds. We ought- then to find 



20 THE rROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

out what circumstances succeed in rousing the 
human reason, and oblige us to open our eyes upon 
the enigma of life. 

Man, perhaps, gentlemen, would never ask 
himself why he was placed in this world, if the 
tendencies of his nature were continually and 
completely satisfied. A perfect, an invariable har- 
mony between the inclination of man's desires and 
the course of affairs would, perhaps, leave his 
reason dormant. It is the evil, gentlemen, the 
evil which exists everywhere in the condition of 
humanity, even in those temporary pleasures called 
happiness, that awakes his reason, and forces him 
to torment himself about human destiny. 

At the beginning of life, our nature, awakening 
with all the desires and faculties with which it is 
endowed, meets a world which seems to offer an 
unlimited field to the satisfaction of the former, 
and to the development of the latter. At the sight 
of the world, which appears full of happiness, our 
nature springs forward filled with hopes and illu- 
sions. But it is not in the condition of humanity 
that any of these hopes should be fulfilled, that 
any of these illusions should be verified. " Out of 
the numerous passions which God has planted in 
ns, out of the numerous faculties with which we 
are gifted, examine and see which of them has its 
end, and attains it in this world. It seems that the 



THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 21 

world which surrounds us has been constructed in 
such a way as to render such a result impossible. 
And yet these desires and these faculties spring 
from our nature ; what they wish is what our 
nature wishes ; what our nature wishes is the end 
for which it was created — its happiness — its good. 
Our nature suffers then, gentlemen, and not only 
suffers, but is surprised and vexed ; for, as it did 
not create itself, it did not depend upon our nature 
to have or not to have these tendencies ; the satis- 
faction of these tendencies appears then not only 
natural but even lawful. Our nature finds, how- 
ever, that the laws both of nature and of justice 
are violated by what happens; and from this 
arises, in the first place, that long incredulity, and 
then that deep protestation which we offer against 
the miseries of life. While our youth lasts, misfor- 
tune astonishes rather than alarms us; it seems 
that an anomaly has happened, and our confidence 
is not shaken. This anomaly is in vain repeated, 
we are not undeceived, we prefer to accuse 
ourselves rather than doubt the justice of Provi- 
dence; we believe that, if we are occasionally mis- 
taken, the fault is in us, and we encourage ourselves 
to be more skillful ; and even when our skill has 
failed a thousand times, we still insist upon believ- 
ing that the fault is in us. But finally the sad 
truth comes to us, either through some great shock 



22 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

which opens our eyes suddenly, or is brought to us 
by experience as life flows on : then the hopes, 
which had mitigated our misery, vanish; then that 
bitter vexation succeeds which renders that misery 
more painful ; then from the bottom of our hearts 
overwhelmed with grief, from the depth of our 
reason w T ounded in its most familiar beliefs, springs 
up inevitably the melancholy question : why has 
man been placed in this world ? 

Do not believe, gentlemen, that the miseries of 
life alone have the privilege of turning our minds 
toward this problem ; it rises as well from our 
pleasures as our pains, because our nature is not 
the less deceived in the former than in the latter. 
In the first moment of the satisfaction of our 
desires, we have the presumption, or rather the 
innocence to think ourselves happy ; but if this 
happiness continues, soon that which was delightful 
begins to fade ; and w^here we had expected to 
enjoy a complete satisfaction, we experience noth- 
ing more than a slight satisfaction, succeeded by a 
still slighter one, which is exhausted little by little, 
and soon is extinguished in tediousness and disgust. 
Such is the unavoidable end of all human happi- 
ness, such is the fatal law which no one can escape. 
If in the moment of triumph of one passion, you 
have the good fortune to be seized by another, 
then, carried away by this new r passion, you will 



THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 23 

escape, it is true, the disenchantment of the first ; 
and it is thus that in a much occupied and very 
hurried life, you can live a considerable time in the 
happiness of this world before learning its vanity. 
This giddiness, however, cannot last always; the 
moment comes when this impetuous inconstancy in 
the pursuit of happiness, which springs from the 
variety and the indecision of our desires, becomes 
finally settled, and when our nature, collecting and 
concentrating in one single passion all the desire of 
happiness which it possesses, beholds this happi- 
ness, loves it and desires it in one thing alone ; to 
which it aspires with all possible energy. Then, 
no matter what may be the passion, then comes 
inevitably the bitter experience which chance had 
postponed ; for, this happiness, so ardently and so 
entirely desired, is hardly gained before it startles 
the soul with its insufficiency ; our soul exhausts 
itself in vain in trying to discover what it had 
dreamed about ; this search even causes the appa- 
rent happiness to wither and fade ; it is no longer 
what it seemed to be — it does not hold to its 
promise-; we have gained all the happiness that 
life can give, and yet the desire of happiness is not 
extinguished. Happiness is then a shadow, life a 
deception, our desires a snare. To such clear proof 
we have nothing to answer; it is more decisive 
than the proof from misery ; for, in wretchedness, 



24r THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

we can still deceive ourselves, and by accusing our 
bad fortune, acquit the nature of things, while now 
it is the very nature of tilings that is convicted of 
perversity ; the heart of man and all the pleasures 
of life placed before him, and yet the heart of man 
is not in the least satisfied. The melancholy reflec- 
tion which elevates man to the thought of his 
destiny, which leads him to torment himself, and 
ask himself what his destiny is^ is produced oftener 
from the experience of the pleasures than the pains 
of life. These are two of the occasions which give 
birth to the question,, but they are not the only 
ones. In the midst of cities, man seems to be the 
lord of creation \ it is here that all his apparent 
superiority shines forth, it is here that he appears 
to be master of the world's stage, or rather, to 
occupy it entirely for himself. But, when this 
being, so strong, so proud, so full of himself, so 
exclusively taken up with his own interests in the 
bosom of great cities and in the midst of the multi- 
tude of his fellow-beings, finds himself, by chance, 
cast into the midst of nature, alone in face of the 
heavens without limit, in face of the horizon 
stretching far off and beyond which there are other 
horizons still, in the midst of those grand produc- 
tions of nature which overwhelm him if not by 
their intelligence at least by their grandeur, when, 
seeirig at his feet from the top of some lofty moun- 



THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 25 

tain, and under the light of the stars, small villages 
losing themselves in distant forests, which are 
themselves lost in the immense expanse, he con- 
siders that these villages are peopled by beings as 
feeble as himself, and compares these beings and 
their wretched habitations with nature which sur- 
rounds them, and compares this nature with our 
world, on the surface of which it is nothing but a 
speck, and this world, in turn, with the thousand 
other worlds floating in space ; at the sight of this 
spectacle, man despises his miserable passions 
always thwarted, his miserable pleasures ending 
always in disgust: then comes also the question of 
learning what he is and what he is doing in the 
world, and then also he places before himself the 
problem of his destiny. 

This is not all. Not only happiness, misfortune, 
the comparison of our weakness with the grandeur 
of nature, but also our thoughts turned either to 
the history of our race or the history of the world 
inhabited by us, call up the problem of destiny in 
the minds of men the most preoccupied and the 
most exclusively busied in satisfying their desires 
and passions. You, who have read history, con- 
sider for a moment how humanity has advanced. 

We see, arriving in the great plains of Asia, 
races of men who descend from the central moun- 
tains of that vast continent, races having perhaps 
2 



26 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

ancestors, but having no history. They come, 
wild, almost naked, hardly armed ; they come, 
without saying where they came from, and to 
whom they belong ; suddenly they arrive and take 
possession of those plains. From another side and 
from the deserts of Arabia come other races, who 
have different brains and different ideas, but who 
are just as ignorant of their origin and their ances- 
tors. When they meet each other, they meet as 
enemies ; long contests take place ; great empires 
are established, overturned, however, almost as 
soon as established ; one race is finally victorious, 
which remains in possession of those lands, and 
rules there alone, holding the others in subjection. 
This empire, scarcely established, comes in contact 
with Europe. There, also, are men without a 
history, having different brains, different ideas, a 
different manner of living. These two races, the 
one Asiatic the other Greek, contend for the supre- 
macy; the Greeks gain the victory, and Asia is 
subjugated. Soon a new people living in the West 
arises, increases rapidly, and swallows up the Greek 
race and its conquests in the immense jaws of its 
empire. This other people is itself surrounded by 
races unknown to themselves and others, who have 
been living in the West and North of Europe for 
an unknown period of time. These men, who 
resemble neither the Romans, nor Greeks, nor 



THE TROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 27 

Orientals, having a different faith, different ideas, 
and different languages, have also their mission, 
Which stirs them up in the bosom of their forests, 
and which summons them in turn upon the world's 
stage. They appear when their hour has come, and 
Rome crumbles away beneath their breath. Later 
still, we penetrate into countries hitherto unknown; 
we discover the north of Asia, the middle of 
Africa, America, and the thousand islands scattered 
like dust on the surface of the ocean, and every- 
where we find new nations — nations of all colors, 
white, black and copper colored, with heads of all 
kinds of shapes, of a civilization of all degrees^ with 
ideas of all kinds ; and no one knows whence they 
come, what they are doing here, or to what they 
are advancing, and no one knows by what bond 
they are attached to common humanity. 

When we reflect upon flie history of the human 
race, upon the profound darkness which every- 
where surrounds its origin, upon those races which 
are discovered everywhere at the same time, and 
everywhere plunged in the same ignorance of their 
origin, upon the differences of every kind which 
separate them still more than distance, or moun- 
tains or seas ; upon the astonishment which seizes 
them when they meet each other, upon the unceas- 
ing hostility which is waged between them from 
the moment of meeting ; when we think of the 



28 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY* 

mysterious predestination which calls them, one by 
one, upon the stage of the world, which causes 
them to shine for a moment and then soon 
reshrouds them in darkness, a feeling of fear seizes 
us, and we feel overwhelmed by the mysterious 
fatality which seems to weigh upon humanity. 
What is then this humanity of which we form a 
part ? Whence does it come ? Toward what does 
it tend ? Is it like the flowers of the fields and the 
trees of the forests ? Did it spring from the earth, 
like them, upon a day fixed by the general laws of 
the universe, to return again to earth some day like 
them ? Or, as its pride has dreamt, is the creation 
only a theatre upon which humanity comes to per- 
form an act of its immortal destiny ? And if the 
light which did not shine upon its cradle would 
only make clear its development ! But, who 
knows toward what it ils advancing, and how it is 
advancing ? The Eastern civilization fell before 
the Greek ; the Greek civilization fell before the 
Roman ; a new civilization, risen from the forests 
of Germany, destroyed the Roman ; what will 
become of this new civilization ? Will it conquer 
the world, or is it the destiny of every civilization 
to expand and then to fall ? In a w r ord, has 
humanity merely revolved in the same circle, or 
has it advanced ? or has it, as some suppose, 
receded? It has been thought by some that all 



THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 29 

light was at the beginning, and that from age to 
age this light is gradually being extinguished, and 
that we, without suspecting it, are advancing 
toward a state of barbarity by the road of civiliza- 
tion. Man stands amazed before these problems, 
humiliated that he belongs to the species ; the 
annihilation of the species in the midst of a sea 
of darkness, freezes his heart and confounds his 
imagination. He asks himself what this law is by 
which men move on like a herd, unconsciously, and 
which carries them from an unknown origin to an 
unknown end ; in this way again is placed before 
man the question of his destiny. 

Again, there is another inducement, one still 
stronger, an inducement caused by the recent scien- 
tific discoveries, to propose to ourselves this ques- 
tion : You know that in digging into the bowels of 
the earth, testimony has been discovered, authentic 
monuments found, of the history of this little globe 
inhabited by us. We are convinced there was a 
time when nature produced only plants, plants of 
immense size, by the side of which ours dwindle 
into insignificance, and which did not cover with 
their shade a single living being. You know it has 
been proved that a great revolution destroyed this 
creation as if it was not worthy of the hand that 
formed it. You know that at the second creation 



30 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

among those large plants and under the domes of 
those gigantic forests which had marked the first 
creation, were produced monstrous reptiles, the 
first attempts at animal organization, the first occu- 
pants of the earth of which they were the sole 
inhabitants. Nature destroyed this creation, and in 
the following she cast quadrupeds upon the earth, 
whose species no longer exists — misshapen animals, 
rudely organized, which lived and reproduced them- 
selves with difficulty, and which seemed like the 
first attempt of an awkward workman. Nature 
again destroyed this creation as she had the others, 
and from experiment to experiment, advancing 
from the imperfect to the more perfect, she arrived, 
finally, at this last creation which placed man for 
the first time upon the earth. Thus, man appears 
to be merely an experiment on the part of the Crea- 
tor, an experiment after many others which it has 
pleased him to make and destroy. Those immense 
reptiles, those misshapen animals which have dis- 
appeared from the face of the earth, lived formerly 
as we now live. "Why shall the day not come when 
our race shall be swept away — when our bones, dug 
from the earth, shall look to the living species like 
the rude attempts of an experimenting nature ? and 
if we are but a link in the chain of creations which 
are less and less imperfect, but a poor proof of an 



TOE PROBLEM OF HUMAN" DESTINY. 31 

unknown type created only to be destroyed, what 
are we, then, and what right have we to abandon 
ourselves to hope and pride ? 

Such, gentlemen, are some of the occasions which, 
in the midst of a most thoughtless life, suddenly 
create the apparition of the problem of destiny in 
the mind of man. You see that we can sum up all 
these occasions in one formula ; for w T hat is com- 
mon to them all, and what causes them to lead the 
mind uniformly to this melancholy reflection, is the 
fact that they testify to the contradiction which ex- 
ists between its natural grandeur and the misery of 
its present condition ; that they disabuse it of that 
implicit confidence which it had in itself ; and that 
in showing everywhere its instincts deceived, its 
hopes deluded, its beliefs contradicted, boundaries 
everywhere, darkness everywhere, weakness every- 
where, they frighten the mind and force it to ob- 
serve that its destiny is an enigma of which it is 
totally ignorant. Such is the common quality con- 
nected in all these occasions, which give the same 
eifect to them as well as to all others partaking of 
this common quality. These circumstances are so 
numerous, and the lessons taught by them so direct 
and simple, that it is utterly impossible for any 
man, no matter how unreflecting, no matter in 
what condition he is, to avoid the thought of the 
problem of destiny during the course of a long life. 



32 TIIE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

Do not think, gentlemen, that it is necessary to be 
wise in order to rise to this thought ; the herdsman 
on the mountain top, in the presence of nature, 
thinks also in his long leisures of what he is and 
what those beings are who live at his feet ; he, too, 
has had ancestors who have descended to the grave 
one after the other, and he asks himself for what 
purpose they w r ere born, and why, after dragging 
out their life on this earth for some years, they died 
and gave up their places to others, who in turn 
have disappeared, and thus continually without end 
and without reason. The shepherd, like us, medi- 
tates upon this infinite creation, of which he is but 
a fragment ; like us, he feels lost in the chain of 
beings the ends of which escape him ; he, too, 
endeavors to find out the relation between himself 
and his flock of sheep, and asks himself if there are 
not other beings superior to himself as he is of a 
higher order than his own flock ; and when he feels 
his own wretchedness, he easily conceives of crea- 
tures more perfect, more capable of happiness, sur- 
rounded by a nature better fitted to confer happi- 
ness ; and of his own accord, by the authority of 
his intelligence, limited and weak as it is, he has 
the boldness to put this important and melancholy 
question to the Creator : " Why ha&t thou created 
me, and what means the part w r hich I perform in 
this world ?" 



THE rROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 33 

"When ? under the influence of one or the other of 
these circumstances, man has finally come to that 
point when he places before himself this grand ques- 
tion, then the doubts which it excites, if he does 
not immediately find the solution of them in the 
established faiths, are terrible. 

I know that a large number of men, after con- 
ceiving the problem, seem to lose sight of it, and to 
trouble themselves no more about it ; but do not be 
deceived, gentlemen : when once this idea has come 
to us, it cannot perish ; we can divert ourselves 
from it, it is true, but we can never rid ourselves 
of it, and the reason is, because the same causes 
recall it continually and with more ease than they 
suggested it to us; because life and death, the 
desires and wretchedness of our nature, the gran- 
deur of. the creation and the obscurity of history 
speak unceasingly to the mind, the heart and the 
soul of man of what most regards him, and besiege 
him continually, and torment him, and do not allow 
him, when once aroused, to fall back again into 
repose. Henceforth, gentlemen, man is no longer 
what he was ; henceforth man is changed ; he has 
emerged from the state of innocence and risen to 
reason and reflection — to the condition properly 
called human. This question is like the torch in 
the fable of Psyche ; before this fearful revelation, 
man yielded obedience to his instincts ; and'without 

2* 



34 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

forethought, without solicitude, he gained or did 
not gain the end toward which he was driven ; 
when he attained it he was happy, when he did not 
attain it he was pained ; but these temporary dis- 
tresses, soon effaced by the appearance of new pas- 
sions, do not resemble in the least the profound sad- 
ness, the incurable melancholy which takes posses- 
sion of him who has conceived the question of hu- 
man destiny and caught a glimpse of the darkness 
surrounding it ; then a new cord in man's soul is 
struck, and all the distractions of the world cannot 
prevent the cord's being there, and cannot prevent 
the slightest touch from causing it to vibrate. 

Then, too, are born — then, too, are developed 
for the first time in the depths of the human soul, 
three feelings hitherto dormant, which can only be 
awakened by the warmth of this sad light. These 
sublime feelings, the glory and the torment of our 
nature, are the poetical, the religious and the philo- 
sophical feelings. 

Hie age of innocence has its poetry, and ripe age 
has its own, and such is the superiority of the lat- 
ter, that when it reveals itself to us, it causes to 
fade and wither away, and utterly destroys, the 
beauty of the first. It is strange to call that 
superficial inspiration poetry, which amuses itself 
in celebrating the frivolous pleasures and in de- 
ploring 'the temporary pains of the passions. We 



THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 35 

must distinguish carefully between true poetry and 
those ordinary songs which are addressed only to 
the lowest and most sensual parts of our souls. 
True poetry expresses only one thing — the per- 
plexities of the human soul before the question of 
its destiny. It is of this alone, gentlemen, that the 
true lyre speaks — the lyre of the great poets — that 
lyre which vibrates with so melancholy a strain in 
the poetry of Byron and in the verses of Lamar- 
tine. Those who have not lived long enough can 
understand but partially those deep accents, sub- 
lime version of an eternal lamentation ; but they 
vibrate deeply in minds ripe with experience, in 
which the mysteries of life and death, the destinies 
of man and mankind have developed the true 
poetic feeling. To such minds alone is it given to 
comprehend lofty lyric poetry ; to them alone is it 
given to feel poetry ; for lyric comprehends all 
poetry ; the rest has merely its form. 

What is true of the poetic is also true of the reli- 
gious feeling. Man can acquire a religion in his 
youth ; this can be taught him like anything else ; 
but what -religion is, a man does not, cannot know 
until he has perplexed himself with human destiny, 
until the experience of life has led him or forced 
him to it. "What is then a religion actually ? Ex- 
amine, gentlemen, and you will find that a religion 
is nothing more than an answer to the problem of 



36 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY 

human destiny and all the questions consequent 
upon it. Of what importance is the solution of 
these problems to him who has never considered 
them, who has never felt the desire of solving 
them ? Can we understand the solution when we 
do not, as yet, understand the problem ? Can we 
be sensible of the value of the light, when we have 
not known the perplexity of the darkness? No, 
gentlemen. Can we then have a religion before 
being religious, that is, before having need of what 
religion gives, before conceiving it, before aspiring 
to it, before knowing its value ? All that comes in 
time and can only come on the day when man re- 
flects upon himself, when the mysteries of his des- 
tiny become apparent, when a longing to know 
them seizes him, and when all the powers of his 
soul, alarmed, demand, invoke light, as the lips of 
the thirsty traveller call out for the spring of the 
desert. From that day man is religious, before 
that time he is not. 

That day, too, and only that day, produces in us 
the philosophical feeling ; for a system of philoso- 
phy, like a religious system, is but an answer to the 
questions interesting to humanity. For two years, 
gentlemen, we have been investigating together 
the nature of man. For what purpose was this 
study ? "Why this investigation ? Do you think it 
was pure curiosity on my part or yours to know 



THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 37 

what we are ? The knowledge of man is undoubt- 
edly a noble conquest in itself, and one which 
deserves to be followed up ; but the ambition of 
making the conquest is not philosophy. Philoso- 
phy is the seeking for a solution of those terrifying 
problems which agitate the human soul ; the philo- 
sophical feeling is the desire of pursuing these 
solutions with the torch of reason and science ; and 
if philosophy is taken up with the nature of man, 
it is because the knowledge of man is the only road 
which can conduct us to these solutions. It is not 
in studying man, but in studying him with this 
view, that we are philosophers ; it is because the 
botanist, the naturalist, the geologist, the historian, 
can proceed in their researches with this end in 
view, that they can be philosophers ; otherwise 
both they and the psychologist would be merely 
scholars. Philosophy is like poetry and religion; 
its nature, its end and value are revealed to the 
heart of man (I am right in saying the heart) only 
when it feels the problem of its destiny weighing 
upon it, and when anxious doubt seizes it in the 
midst of its primitive carelessness. 

Philosophy is a matter of the heart, like poetry 
and religion ; if we put our mind to it only, it is 
possible that we may some day become philoso- 
phers, but it is evident that we are not as yet 
philosophers. 



38 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

Poetry, religion, philosophy are the three mani- 
festations of the same feeling, which satisfies itself 
in the first by harmonious lamentations, in the 
second by a lively faith, in the last by laborious 
researches ; it is this which makes poetical, 
religious and philosophical minds brotherly ; it is 
this which causes them to understand each other 
so well, although speaking such different lan- 
guages ; it is this which causes poetry, religion and 
philosophy to have no effect upon souls, which do 
not know, which do not as yet comprehend the 
tempest that agitates them. 

Such, gentlemen, is the great revolution excited 
in man by the apparition .of the problem of des- 
tiny. This problem does not, however, remain, as 
it was when it first entered our minds ; it ferments, 
so to speak, and gives birth to a multitude of other 
questions contained in it, which inevitably demand 
an explanation in every understanding, into which 
it has entered. 

In fact, gentlemen, this problem is not great only 
through the interest which it inspires, it is great 
from its vastness, that is from the vast questions 
which it brings with it, and which, following in its 
train, make an inroad upon the human understand- 
ing. It brings them, gentlemen, because it implies 
them and is implied by them; because we can 
neither solve them without it, nor it without them, 



THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 39 

and because they form with it and it with them 
one single grand problem. Philosophy has divided 
this problem in order to solve it. You know that 
the inquiry into the destiny of man in this world, 
is called morality ; the inquiry of his destiny before 
and after this life, religion; the inquiry of the 
destiny of the human race, philosophy of history ; 
the inquiry of the origin and laws of the universe, 
cosmology ; the inquiry as to the nature of God 
and the relations existing between him and man 
and the creation, theology / you know that it dis- 
tinguishes many other problems, the law of nature, 
political law, the law of nations, etc. All these 
divisions are useful, inasmuch as by them we must 
analyze a subject, to study it; but do not think 
that these lines, drawn across the subject of philo- 
sophy, destroy its radical unity. The questions are 
distinct, but inseparable ; they are only branches 
of the same trunk ; he who thinks of one, must 
think of all ; he who wishes to solve one, is obliged 
to solve all ; they rest on each other, they imply 
each other, they presuppose each other, they make 
but one in the mind of man. 

For instance, try to find out what is the best 
possible government. How will you find it out ? 
Is not the best possible government that which 
conducts society to its end in the best way or 
which allows it to attain it in the best way. We 



40 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

must then know the end of society, in order to 
know what is the best possible government. But 
how can we know the end of society, except by 
knowing the end of man himself? Society is only 
a collection of human beings, and the end of a col- 
lection can only be the same as that of the elements 
composing it. Thus the problem of politics is a 
corollary of the problem of society, while the social 
is but a corollary of the moral problem ; and it is 
just as impossible to consider the consequence inde- 
pendently of the principle, as to stop at the princi- 
ple without descending to the consequence. Again, 
how can we separate the moral from the religious 
problem ? Who has ever demonstrated to you 
that the whole destiny of man is inclosed between 
the cradle and the tomb ? Where haye you learnt 
that birth is the true beginning, that death is the 
true end ? He who, during the four thousand 
years that humanity has been thinking, had made 
out this demonstration, must have kept the secret 
well ; for humanity, which has always thought the 
contrary, which has always meditated over the 
"cradle of the infant and over the tomb of the old 
man, still persists in its belief, and science has not 
yet brought to light a proof, a fact which seriously 
shakes it. ]STo one can, in the inquiry concerning 
man's destiny, confine himself to the period 
between birth and death. He must, with the 



THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 41 

human race, and in the name of its wants and its 
reason, overleap these false limits, and penetrate to 
the past and the future of man, that is, the science 
rightly called religion. Then only can he embrace 
the problem of destiny of man in its whole extent, 
only then will he be able to comprehend this 
destiny, such as it is; for, If we mutilate it in any 
way, we falsify it ; for some portion of this destiny 
will remain obscure, when the whole has not been 
explained. This is the reason that religion enters 
into ethics, into politics, into the law of nations ; 
these sciences, in fact, are based on morality, and 
morality is not clear and not complete except in ita 
alliance with religion. The mind cannot then any 
more resist the inclination which carries it from the 
moral to the religious problem, than it can the 
logic which makes it ascend to the moral, in order 
to solve the religious problem. 

The bonds uniting all these problems with that 
of the origin and destiny of the species, are not less 
strict. Attempt to separate in thought the lot of 
man from that humanity, or the lot of humanity 
from that of man, you cannot do it. The mind 
goes from one to the other by a deep logic, of 
which reflection lias no difficulty in rendering an 
account. In fact, man searches far his own destiny 
in searching for that of the species ; as long as he 
has not determined the one, he cannot know the 



42 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

other. Man cannot stop at his own particular end ; 
he is forced to busy himself with the destiny of 
himself, and not only with that of humanity, but 
with that of the different beings peopling the 
creation, and with that of the entire universe. On 
starting from himself, he proceeds inevitably to all 
things, and to God, source of all things ; and as he 
proceeds to everything only by virtue of the 
anxiety which he has for himself, he can think 
of nothing, he can ponder over no problem, with- 
out reverting to himself, or, to speak more cor- 
rectly, without placing himself, without keeping 
himself continually in the centre of all things. 
This is the reason that the problem of human 
destiny is so fruitful, that the question, when it has 
once appeared in the understanding, evokes a 
thousand others, and that all the questions which 
philosophy separates for solution, remain, neverthe- 
less, united by an indissoluble chain, and form, in 
reality, only one single problem, which, to the eye 
of common sense as well as of reason, is only 
solved in one of its parts, when it is in all. 

This dependence is so strong and natural, that it 
is perceived by the dullest as well as the acutest 
intellects. When the peasant has once asked him- 
self the question, " Why am I here ?" his intelli- 
gence does not stand still any more than that of 
Aristotle or Pascal ; his mind, like theirs, feels the 



THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 43 

logical necessity which leads from this problem to 
others ; it yields obedience to the necessity, and 
goes as far as their minds. Question a man of the 
lower class, and you will be convinced that in this, 
as well as in everything else, there is a much 
smaller difference between man and man, between 
one intelligence and another, than we have the 
ridiculous habit of believing. Every human under- 
standing, aroused by the problem of destiny, pro- 
ceeds to all the consequences of this problem. 
From this, it happens that it has the virtue of 
elevating and of leading the dullest minds to many 
ideas and much meditation, and that the shepherd, 
in whom the revelation of this problem has taken 
place, is a creature more fully developed than the 
most accomplished mind in which it has not 
appeared. 

All that I have just said, gentlemen, in regard 
to the vastness of the problem of human destiny, 
and the indissoluble connection of the questions 
which it excites, and in regard to the participation 
of all human beings in the understanding of these 
questions, and the anxiety caused by them, is 
written in deep characters in the history of 
humanity. In fact, while the poetry of all nations, 
the most ancient as well as the most modern, the 
most savage as well as the most civilized, chants 
either the melancholy doubts inspired by these 



44: THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

questions, or the meditations, sometimes gloomy 
and sometimes brilliant, by which men were driven 
to attempt a solution, "we behold, rising on the 
theatre of history, two classes of monuments, which 
testify in a still more authentic way to the accu- 
racy of my statements ; I mean the different 
religions and systems of philosophy. 

What is a religion ? What is a philosophical 
system ? I have already told you, gentlemen, and 
I again repeat it, they are two different answers to 
the questions which concern humanity. Why have 
w T e these two answers to one and the same enig- 
ma ? We will speak of this later ; but first it is 
well for you to notice that in no corner of the 
globe, at no period of time, has one at least of these 
answers been wanting. Systems of philosophy 
come only with civilization ; but with or without 
civilization, wherever there have been men, or 
wherever there are any, there have been and there 
are religious beliefs. Religious feelings have been 
found in the wretched inhabitants of the poles, 
who live in houses of snow, and in the stupid sav- 
ages of New Holland, who in everything else are 
not more advanced than animals. A proof incon- 
testable, gentlemen, that it is sufficient for man to 
be a man in order to have these questions spring 
up — a clear testimony of the anxiety which they 
produce, since man has discovered a solution, when 



THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 45 

he hardly knows how to satisfy the most simple and 
the most pressing of his physical wants. If you 
examine all the religions which have prevailed for 
a long time, and governed a large portion of hu- 
manity, and all the systems of philosophy which 
have established schools and successively rallied 
around them the enlightened part of humanity, you 
will find that those religions and those systems 
have this in common, that they investigated and 
solved without exception all the problems which 
we have proposed. This is the sign by which 
every grand religion and every grand philosophical 
doctrine is recognized ; and it can be said that a 
religion w T hich neglects one of these problems is 
only a half-religion, as well as a doctrine of philo- 
sophy which does not answer them all is but a 
half-philosophy. 

Do you wish for an example of the greatness and 
extent of a grand religion ? Consider the Christian 
religion. Here is a small book which is taught, to 
infants, and about which questions are asked them 
at church. Read this little book, which is the Cat- 
echism ;' you will there find a solution of all the 
questions which I have placed 4 before you — of all 
of them, without exception. Ask the Christian 
whence comes the human race, he can answer you ; 
toward what it is advancing, he can tell you ; in 
what way it advances, he can tell* Ask a little 



46 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

child, who has never thought of the subject, why 
he is here and what will become of him after 
death, he will give you a sublime answer, which 
he does not understand, but which is nevertheless 
| admirable. Ask him how the world was created, 
I and for what purpose : why God has placed ani- 
mals and plants upon it ; how the earth has been 
peopled — if by one family or many ; why men 
speak different languages ; why they suffer ; why 
they contend with each other ; how all this will 
terminate. He can tell vou. The origin of the 
world, the origin of the species, the question of the 
races, the destiny of man in this life and the life 
to come, the relations of man with God, the 
duties of man toward his fellow beings, the 
rights of man over the creation — he is ignorant 
of nothing ; and when he reaches manhood he will 
have no doubts on the subject of ethics, of politics, 
of the law of nations ; for these all spring from and 
flow clearly, and as it were spontaneously, from 
Christianity. This is what I call a grand religion ; 
I recognize it from the fact that it leaves not a sin- 
gle question interesting to humanity unanswered. 
If you approach now the great philosophers, you 
will find the same comprehensiveness in their sys- 
tems. Look at Epicurus : there is not a question 
which concerns humanity which has not its solution, 
either good or bad. in his system. He has given 



THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 47 

an answer to all of them. It is the same thing 
with Platonism, with Stoicism, with Kantism, and 
with all the grand systems of philosophy. Like 
every grand religion, every great philosophical sys- 
tem solves all the problems which concern and per- 
plex humanity. 

Let us notice now the difference existing between 
a religion and a system of philosophy. Produced 
by the same want, these two kinds of solutions 
were not, however, produced in the same way, and 
from this circumstance it happens, that in answer- 
ing the same questions, and addressing themselves 
to the same humanity, they appropriate to them- 
selves different forms, and do not establish their 

authoritv on the same basis. 

%/ 

Transport yourselves, gentlemen, in thought to 
those remote ages which the traditions of all nations 
indistinctly recall, when the human race, still small 
in numbers, still unarmed and savage, found itself 
scattered over the surface of the earth, in presence 
of a nature which it had not as yet attempted to 
subjugate, and of whose laws it was ignorant. If 
today, when all the movements of this gigantic 
power have been calculated by the genius of man 
and subjected to his wants, we still tremble occa- 
sionally in the presence of nature, and feel humbled 
when her voice thunders, judge what those few 
families, lost in her bosom, must have experienced, 



48 THE MOSLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

when in her savage and primitive strength she dis- 
played herself unknown and unconquered around 
them. If ever man must have felt his wretched- 
ness, and been terrified at it, it was surely in those 
early times, when nature was grander and he fee- 
bler, when nature's grandeur and his weakness were 
increased by his ignorance and destitution. From 
this arose, gentlemen, that profound fear of human- 
ity at its cradle, the trace of which is imprinted in 
the ancient traditions of all nations, and which we 
find among all the savage tribes of the four quar- 
ters of the globe. This was the cause of the imme- 
diate appearance of philosophical and religious 
questions in the bosom of all the newly created 
societies, and of the profound attention excited by 
them — a manifestation so ancient, an attention so 
exclusive, that the facts relative to those questions 
and their solution are everywhere the only records 
which men have preserved of those wonderful ages 
immediately following the creation* 

What problems these are, gentlemen, for the 
frightened imagination, and for the ignorant reason 
of the first of mankind 1 At the very moment that 
humanity felt most sensibly the urgent need of 
solving them, it was, and felt itself, most incapable 
of it In fact humanity possessed none of those 
ideas of nature or of man which experience has 
gradually gathered, and which have thrown light 



THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 49 

upon a part of these mysteries. Standing in the 
presence of these formidable problems, with the 
consciousness of its own ignorance, humanity could 
not but feel a profound despair, and expect 
from Heaven alone the truth for which it was 
eager. And yet, gentlemen, we do not see that 
this despair has been anywhere justified ; to 
these questions, so anciently proposed, we find 
everywhere solutions not less anciently found 
and admitted. The reason is, there are facts 
existing in the human soul — there are, in the posi- 
tion of man face to face with nature, relations 
which cannot escape any consciousness, and in 
these simple data, there exists for human reason so 
strongly excited, for the imagination so powerfully 
aroused, the germ of an imperfect solution of the 
problem. 

We also see that man hardly proposes this prob- 
lem to himself, that he hardly experiences the anx- 
iety of solving it, before he comes to a solution. 
Everywhere the consciousness of man finds out a 
solution of the questions which concern him — a 
solution imperfect, strange perhaps to eyes that are 
blind, but in which there is a considerable portion 
of truth, and which does for a beginning. In the 
position in which those were in which this pheno- 
menon took place, the appearance of some explana- 
tion to questions so interesting and so important 



50 THE raOHLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

must have arisen, not as the result of human will, 
but the result of a supernatural intervention. Only 
when we have made an effort to seek the truth, are 
we conscious of gaining it ; but we never make 
the effort except we have caught a glimpse of the 
truth. The effort of the intellect, notwithstanding 
appearances, has for its end only elucidation ; and 
in order to make anything clear, we must first 
have the consciousness of possessing it. In the 
first manifestation of the truth of these important 
problems, not only was it possible, but it was natu- 
ral for men in whom it appeared, to delude them- 
selves, and to imagine that some inspiration from 
Heaven had descended to them, and had revealed 
the truth. Which, if they did not believe, the en- 
thusiasm of the people believed and must have be- 
lieved ; and when a few generations had passed 
away, the circumstances of the event, which would 
have appeared human at the time, became divine 
like the rest. From this came the nature of the 
belief accorded to the first solution of the problem 
of human destiny. Although they answered to 
the light of the period, it was not on this account 
that they were received ; their celestial origin had 
clearer evidence for men than their uncertain 
truth ; and the more prosaic, the more difficult to 
understand of these two evidences, was based upon 
the more poetical and the more easily comprehend- 



THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 51 

ed. If now yoit consider the exaltation of those 
who found out those solutions, the naturally poet- 
ical imagination and the necessarily figurative lan- 
guage of the primitive races, and lastly, the prone- 
ness to the marvellous which belongs peculiarly to 
all nations lost in the midst of nature — who live 
in the presence of the mysterious causes which ani- 
mate it, you will readily conceive that if faith must 
have been the characteristic of the primitive be- 
liefs, mythology must have been the form of the 
first dogmas. Such are, in fact, the two character- 
istics of these ancient solutions of the problem of 
human destiny, and of all those which afterward 
sprang spontaneously, like them, from the common 
sense of mankind. Such are in other words, with 
a less or greater difference, the characteristics of 
every religion. 

It is only at a later period, gentlemen, and with 
the progress of civilization, that systems of philoso- 
phy arise by the side of religions. Systems of phi- 
losophy were created on that day, when some men, 
tormented like the rest of mankind by the problems 
concerning humanity, and accustomed to recognize 
truth in no other way than by its own testimony, 
attempted to solve these problems with their rea- 
son alone, regarding only the facts which were 
given to their reason to attain and comprehend. 
You see at the first glance that solutions obtained 



52 THE mOBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

in this way could not have the sai$e characteristics 
as the former. The author of a philosophical sys- 
tem having built up his own system, cannot be de- 
ceived in regard to its origin ; the investigations lie 
made he made willingly ; the means he employed 
he employed voluntarily ; what he discovered is 
therefore incontestably the product of his laborious 
meditations ; he can, then, only put faith in it 
because he sees in it the truth ; he can, then, only 
wish that people would believe it for the same rea- 
sons. And as the results he found, he found with 
his reason alone, their form must be rational — that 
is, the simple and exact expression of the truth. 
From which you see, gentlemen, that if philosophi- 
cal systems are inspired by the same desire and 
answer the same problems as religion, they are not 
based on the same authority, and do not appear 
under the same form. The claim of a religion is 
its origin ; its form is poetic ; the claim- of a sys- 
tem of philosophy is its testimony ; its form is 
rational. Such are the opposite characteristics 
which mark them. 

If you will reflect upon this, gentlemen, you will 
understand that during many ages the generality 
of mankind was incapable of accepting the truth 
under a philosophical form, and that if religions 
had their cradle and their empires in the bosom of 
the masses, it was because religions were infinitely 



THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 53 

better adapted to their wants. The reasons of this 
are so numerous, that I must choose, and limit 
myself to the principal. In the first place, such is 
the fearful nature and vastness of the problems to 
be solved, that it seems impossible to the masses 
that human reason should succeed in it, and they 
think it infinitely more natural that God, who is 
good, should have revealed the solution to us. In 
the second place, no matter how bold any system 
is, it is never so bold as a religion, on account of 
the way in which it is produced ; so that the most 
daring philosophy, leaving still unexplained a mul- 
titude of mysteries, which religion cuts through, 
satisfies the curiosity and the desires of humanity 
much less completely. In the third place, a sys- 
tem of philosophy, having no other claim to belief 
than its truth, and the masses not being capable of 
verifying it, it has neither authority nor influence 
over them. In the fourth place, philosophical 
language is unintelligible to the masses, because it 
represents the truth of things, and because the com- 
mon people only seize hold of the appearance. 
Hie forms which obscure the truth to the eyes of 
philosophy, are precisely what render it percepti- 
ble to the generality of men. Do not believe that 
the symbols and the myths wdiich surrounded the 
first religions, were for the people an obstacle to 
their comprehensions ; far from it, it was their Ian- 



54 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

guage and the language of the age. In proportion 
as the intelligence of the mass makes progress and 
acquires acuteness, this language divests itself, so 
to speak, and becomes more spiritual ; from this it 
comes that religions, one after the other, speak to 
the masses a less and less figurative language, 
which approaches nearer and nearer to the lan- 
guages of philosophy, and that, in place of the 
innumerable myths of the early ages, they substi- 
tute more and more simple symbols. The progress 
in art is marked in the same way, for the same 
reason. 

As time is urgent, gentlemen, and I have yet 
much to say to you, I can give you merely a hasty 
sketch. 

I have endeavored to make you understand bjth 
the nature and extent of the problem of human 
destiny ; you perceive that, historically, two kinds 
of solutions have been given to this problem — the 
religious and the philosophical solutions ; you see 
the reason of the different forms which they appro- 
priated, and how, although equally containing the 
truth, the latter were more peculiarly made for 
reflecting minds, and the former for the multitude, 
at least until the multitude reached a high degree 
of civilization and of enlightenment. 

As, in the sciences, more perfect ideas succeed 
those which are less perfect, and more intelligible 



THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 55 

and more complete systems succeed less perfect 
and more confused systems ; so in the labor of the 
whole of humanity on the problem of human 
destiny, humanity has advanced from obscure to 
less obscure, from incomplete to more complete 
solutions, by a progress, the rapidity of which has 
never ceased to increase, and the end of which is 
indefinite. There has been, consequently, a succes- 
sion of solutions, or of dogmas, w r hich have, one 
after the other, governed either the w r hole or a 
large portion of humanity. 

The reason of a certain dogma ending, or what 
comes to the same thing, of a certain solution of 
the great question of destiny being abandoned, is 
that the enlightenment of the part of humanity, 
which had accepted this solution, having increased 
in time, and finding itself superior to this solution, 
this solution is of course not sufficient. Then from 
this superior enlightenment comes first doubt, and 
afterward the creation of a new solution. Thus 
it is that solutions have followed each other under 
the double forms of religions and philosophical 
svstems— '-the one for the mass, the other for think- 
ing minds. 

There is no repose for humanity, from the day 
that it possesses no longer a solution of this prob- 
lem, which it can regard as true. In fact, how can 
a man live in peace, when his reason, charged with 



56 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

the conduct of life, foils into uncertainty upon life 
itself, and knows nothing of what it ought to know, 
in order to fulfill its mission ? How can we live in 
peace when we know neither whence we come, 
where we are going, nor what we have to do in 
this world ; when we are ignorant of what man 
and the species and the creation mean ; when 
everything is an enigma — a mystery, a subject of 
doubts and fears ? To live in peace in such igno- 
rance is a thing inconsistent and impossible. If 
some men can, by force of absence of mind and 
thoughtlessness, lull themselves to sleep in such a 
situation, it is an exception which does not come to 
the generality. As soon as doubt has taken pos- 
session of them, they are perplexed ; they do not 
find peace again, until the doubt has disappeared. 
There are then, necessarily, in the life of 
humanity, crises, and these crises are those periods 
when the light obliges humanity to throw off a 
received dogma, in order to create and embrace 
another. It is the interval separating inevitably 
these two solutions, that humanity suffers and is 
agitated ; it suffers and is agitated, then because 
its ideas are not settled, and because, as long as its 
ideas are not settled on those matters which con- 
cern it the most to know with certainty, it is 
impossible for humanity to remain quiet, it is 
impossible for humanity not to suffer. 



THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 57 

These periods are called revolutionary, and they 
alone deserve this name ; for the only true revolu- 
tions are the revolutions of ideas ; all the other 
movements which agitate human affairs follow for 
him who can see and comprehend. A revolution is 
then a step made by the human mind in search of 
truth. To condemn revolutions, is to condemn 
human nature, and with human nature, God, who 
made human nature progressive ; to fight against 
revolutions, is to fight against the nature of things 
and the laws of Providence. 



3* 



LECTUEE IL 

METHOD OF SOLVING THE PROBLEM. 

"We have proposed the problem on which all our 
efforts will be concentrated ; not only have we pro- 
posed it, but decomposed it, in noticing the par- 
ticular questions which it implies or which it gives 
rise to. We have felt the importance of those 
questions, and the relations of dependence uniting 
them ; and lastly, we have shown that now, in the 
present situation of affairs, it is more important 
than ever to meditate deeply over the problem of 
human destiny, and to attempt to discover a solu- 
tion of it, which can bear the double examination — 
the double criticism of enlightened reason and 
simple good sense. 

One of these criticisms, gentlemen, is not the 
less to be feared than the other ; for if enlightened 
minds are capable of penetrating further in the 
investigation of truth, they are much less capable 
than simple good sense of* appreciating the accu- 
racy and the whole truth of a doctrine. If you 
present to common sense the solution of one of 

63 



METHOD OF SOLVING THE PROBLEM. 59 

these questions which concern the whole world, and 
about which the whole world has meditated, if the 
solution is incomplete, exclusive, hypothetical, if, 
in a word, it has not sufficient breadth to answer 
every case, be assured that this imperfection will 
not escape common sense, which will reject the 
proposed solution. If common sense was obliged 
to say why the solution is displeasing, and how the 
solution errs, it would be much puzzled ; its instinct 
rather than its intelligence protests. This internal 
feeling, although obscure, is not the less sure or the 
less obligatory. It is easier to make a philosopher 
believe an error than an ordinary man, because it 
is easier to lead astray by logic a man who is in 
the habit of making use of it, than him whose 
judgment has never been troubled by any subtili- 
ties. There is some truth in the theory of Leibnitz, 
who compared human intelligence to a mirror, in 
which is obscurely painted the image of all things, 
and who maintained that all the efforts of reflection 
ended only in making clear some portions of this 
confused image. If there is but one figure present, 
it gives none the less a true idea of that which 
is taking place in the human understanding. 
Involuntarily our intellect receives a confused 
impression of all things, whieh is so much the more 
truthful as it is the more natural and less sought 
for. The multitude do not advance beyond this 



60 METHOD OF SOLVING THE PROBLEM. 

primitive impression ; this Impression forms the 
common sense. When we, as philosophers, wish to 
understand clearly what the world perceives con- 
fusedly, we apply our attention to these common 
data ; but, wholly taken up with the particular 
point which we are considering, we bestow often 
an importance upon it which it does not deserve ; 
we end by forgetting, or at least by neglecting, a 
certain number of other points standing in the 
shade, and we thus fall into exclusive and hypo- 
thetical opinions ; while common sense, which con- 
tinues to see everything obscurely but equally, 
shims this danger, preserves the feeling of the 
whole, and does not permit it to be sacrificed to 
narrow and partial views. We should therefore 
have the highest regard for the common opinion in 
our investigations of those matters which concern 
the world, and about which all mankind have some 
knowledge. It is prudent and best, when we 
believe we have made a discoverv, to submit it to 
the test of universal good sense, to see if it contains 
nothing repugnant to good sense, and omits noth- 
ing which good sense demands. This plan is 
especially applicable to philosophy, which is occu- 
pied with precisely those questions the most 
interesting to humanity. We will endeavor, gen- 
tlemen, not to forget this ; we will not accept our 
solutions, from the fact alone that they appear to 



METHOD OF SOLVING THE PROBLEM. 61 

us under cover of our own criticism ; we will make 
them stand the test of the universal sentiment, 
whose negative criticism is the veritable touchstone 
of the excellence of any system. 

As I devoted my first lecture to laying down the 
problem and making you feel the importance and 
vastness of it, so I shall devote this present lecture 
to finding out what means we possess and what 
method we ought to pursue in order to solve it. 
This lecture will, therefore, gentlemen, be dry, and 
I must ask your pardon for it in advance ; but you 
come here for the purpose of instruction, and you 
know that the flowers are rare in the paths leading 
to science. 

In contemplating the vastness of the question, 
the grandeur and diversity of the problems em- 
braced by it, and above all their obscurity, we are 
tempted in the first place to despair of finding a 
solution, and we perceive that human reason, in the 
consciousness of its weakness, thought that God 
alone could pour light into this profound obscurity. 
I grant, gentlemen, it would be pleasant and very 
convenient for human reason, if He who created all 
things, both the world and us, and who knows the 
secrets of his own work, had vouchsafed to tell us 
the meaning of this enigma. Before the authority 
of such a revelation all our doubts would vanish, 
and if gueh a revelation existed, we would have 



02 METHOD OF SOLVING THE PROBLEM. 

nothing more to search for. The existence, how- 
ever, of these doubts proves sufficiently that God 
did not give us this knowledge ; for a revealed 
solution would bo a perfect one, and a perfect solu- 
tion would have put an end to all anxiety and to 
all investigation. It appears, then, gentlemen, that 
God has left to human reason the laborious task of 
discovering by itself this solution. Why should it 
be otherwise? Look at power, at happiness and 
all the other objects of man's ambition ; by a fatal 
law the price of their conquest is work ; man gains 
nothing but by the sweat of his brow. Science is 
subject to this general rule ; upon the most in- 
different questions, as well as the most interesting 
problems, truth is a conquest, and it is only by 
force of investigations that we arrive at any dis- 
covery ; and yet it is not the complete truth which 
we discover, but an imperfect truth, which in- 
creases from age to age without ever ending, which 
unceasingly excites the activity of the understand- 
ing, without having the power of pacifying it. Let 
us be resigned, gentlemen, and let us accept the lot 
of humanity without a murmur ; let us do what all 
men have done before us, who sought the truth. 
We possess an intelligence to know it and a reason 
to combine the best means of discovery ; let us 
make use of these means with patience and good 
sense, and if the whole truth must escape us, let us 



METHOD OF SOLVING THE PROBLEM. 63 

at least try to come at the most complete truth 
possible. 

The human reason, in its investigations, can 
arrive at two different results. Sometimes it suc- 
ceeds in discovering the truth which it was in pur- 
suit of; sometimes its efforts fail, it remains power- 
less. The true scientific spirit knows how to make 
profit out of this last result. In place of the truth 
which escapes him, he masters the difficulty w r hich 
prevented him from attaining it, separating care- 
fully in the question what is known from what is 
unknown, he states precisely the nature of this 
difficulty; he ascertains, in detail, the circum- 
stances, the extent and the causes ; he explores, in 
a word, the obstacle he could not pass over, and if 
he does not leave the problem solved, he at least 
renders to science the service of leaving it clearly 
expressed. 

Often these investigations, which are purely 
negative in character, lead to a much more 
important result. In exploring the nature of the 
difficulty which it could not surmount, science dis- 
covers that the difficulty is insurmountable in itself. 
Then it is no longer the limit of the power of the 
individual which is met and marked, it is the limit 
of the power of our reason. This result is not less 
important than the discovery of truth itself. There 
are two ways, for a thinking man, of having a 



64 



METIIOD OF SOLVING THE mOBLEM. 



tranquil soul arid a calm spirit — the first is to 
possess the truth, or think that you possess it, on 
the questions interesting to humanity ; the second 
is to recognize clearly that this truth is inaccessible, 
and to know the reason of it. We do not see 
humanity rebelling against the barriers which limit 
its power on all sides. Before the storms of heaven, 
the tempests of the ocean, the convulsions of 
nature, the narrow prison of this world, the 
maladies and sickness, humanity recognizes its 
weakness, and yields ; and why ? Because this 
weakness is demonstrated, and because the rebel- 
lion would be useless. The intelligence of man, 
although infinitely less restrained than his power, 
has also its limits, limits which it would in vain 
attempt to overleap. The facts which we can 
observe being limited, the inductions we can draw 
from these facts are also limited ; science has its 
horizon, beyond which it cannot see ; it belongs to 
it to mark this boundary little by little, as it is met. 
It is here, gentlemen, upon the extreme frontier of 
its domain, that science should be separated from 
poetry, which alone is privileged to go further ; 
science must be separated, under the penalty of 
yielding its place ; science owes it to humanity, 
to whom it has its mission of making known 
the truth to humanity, who have suffered too 
much for having expected it and sought for it, 



METHOD OF SOLVING THE PHOBLEM. 65 

where it was and where it will always be inacces- 
sible. 

The method to be followed, in order to solve 
these questions, is indicated by common sense. I 
have already pointed it out ; these questions are 
not foreign to each other ; a certain dependence 
unites them. If a certain dependence exists, it 
follows that the solution of one of them cannot be 
useless fur that of another, and consequently, that 
it is not a matter of indifference whether we 
approach them in such or such order, in order to 
solve them. Now, there is a very, simple way of 
discovering this dependence ; it is to take each of 
these questions, one after the other, and after gain- 
ing a precise idea of the difficulty attached to it, to 
search for what we must know, in order to solve 
the difficulty. It is evident, that in proceeding in 
this way, we make clear all the relations of depend- 
ence which can exist between these questions, or in 
other words, all the ways in which each of them 
can presuppose the solution of all the others. 

"We shall follow this method, which is at once 
very simple and sure. The review will be brief, 
as all in it will be clear, and as in the former 
lecture, I noticed the greater part of these depen- 
dencies. 

Among the problems which we have to examine, 
let us consider, in the first place, that which is the 



66 METHOD OF SOLVING THE PROBLEM. 

object of the science called Natural Right or ethics. 
What is the design of this science ? You know, 
gentlemen, that it is to ascertain the respective 
rights and duties of individuals living in society. 
Now, what must we know in order to solve this 
question ? Let us try to determine. What has 
every man a right to do ? He has undoubtedly the 
right to do everything indispensable to the accom- 
plishment of the end for which he is in this world ; 
in this, undoubtedly, is the source of right; it is 
because we have a certain destiny to accomplish, a 
certain end to attain in this world, that we have 
the right to do certain things- The end of man, 
then, in this world, must be previously deter- 
mined ; otherwise, it is impossible to tell what he 
has a right to do, and what no one has a right to 
prevent him from doing. Our duties come from 
the same source — right in others constitutes duty 
in us, and reciprocally ; in other words, we ought 
to respect in them that which they have the right 
to do, that is, all the acts indispensable to the 
accomplishment of their destiny, and in their turn, 
they ought to respect in us all that is necessary for 
the accomplishment of our end, and as their end 
and ours are identical, it follows that there is a per- 
fect identity between our rights and theirs, between 
their duties and ours ; it is this which constitutes 
the moral and civil equality of all men. 



METHOD OF SOLVING THE PROBLEM. 67 

We cannot, then, determine either the rights or 
duties of men united in society, unless we know 
the end of man. There is, therefore, a manifest 
dependence between the problem of ethics and the 
problem of man's destiny in this life ; to solve the 
first, we must have solved the second ; and the 
order in which these two problems should be 
approached, results immediately from this depend- 
ence. 

Let us now turn our attention to another prob- 
lem not less important — that which it is the aim of 
politics to solve. It is sufficient that the rights 
and duties of each one should be determined, in 
order to lay the foundations of society : for each 
one then knows what he can do in the association, 
and what he is bound to respect. But who will 
oblige individuals to follow these rules ? Experi- 
ence proves that among the members of an associa- 
tion, there is always a great number who endeavor 
to extend their rights to the detriment of others. 
From this comes, in every society, the necessity of 
a higher power, established by society, with the 
mission of- causing the rights of each one to be 
respected by each individual. But this mission, 
purely negative, is not the only one which the 
political power has to fulfill. If society had no 
other effect than to place the rights of its members 
in contact, and consequently in hostility to each 



68 METHOD OF SOLVING THE PROBLEM. 

other, it would be an evil rather than a good, and 
humanity would have cause to lament the pos- 
session of its desires and affections. But this is 
not the case. The principal and positive effect of 
an association is to increase the power of each of its 
members by the power of all the others, and conse- 
quently of rendering each individual infinitely 
more capable of advancing toward his end, than he 
is in a state of isolation. This effect is more or 
less perfectly produced, according as the association 
is more or less perfect, that is, according to the 
better or worse political organization of the society. 
A political institution has then a double end, the 
one negative, which is to cause the rights of each 
individual to be respected by the other ; the other 
positive, which is to lead society to its end, that 
is, to make the forces of all cooperate as well as 
possible for good, or what comes to the same thing, 
for the accomplishment of the destiny of each one. 
"What is the best possible government, or what is 
the political institution the best adapted to bring 
about this double result ? Such is the problem 
which the science of politics has for its object to 
solve. The ideas which the solution of this prob- 
lem presupposes, are not difficult to ascertain. It 
is evident that we must know what the rights of 
man in society are, in order to ascertain what is 
the political institution the best adapted to gua- 



METHOD OF SOLVING THE PROBLEM:. 69 

rantce to each one the exercise of these rights. In 
this relation, then, the political problem presup- 
poses the solution of the problem of the law of 
nature or ethics, which in turn presupposes the 
solution of the problem of the destiny of man. 
Secondly, it is manifest that we must know the end 
of the individual, to know that of society, and the 
end of society, to determine what is the best 
political organization to conduct society to its end. 
It* we are ignorant of the destiny of man in this 
world, the end of society, which is to smooth the 
way for each man in the accomplishment of hia 
destiny, will escape us ; and if the end of society is 
unknown to ns, upon what data can we base our 
search for the best possible organization of society ? 
Under the second relation, as under the first, the 
political problem presupposes the solution of the 
two problems of man's destiny and ethics ; from 
which it follows that we cannot and ought not to 
approach the political problem, until we have 
solved the first two, and^that it ought not to take 
rank in science until after them. 

]STow, gentlemen, as there exist relations between 
individuals, so there exist relations between soci- 
eties ; and as the science of ethics has for its aim 
the determining of the first, so the science of the 
Law of Nations has for its object the determining 
of the second. "What are the rights which belong 



70 METHOD OF SOLVING TIIE PROBLEM. 

to each society, and which all others ought to 
respect? Such is, in other words, the problem of 
the law of nations. It is clear that the reason a 
society has certain rights is that it has an end. If 
an individual had no destiny to accomplish, he 
would possess no right ; for all his rights are 
resolved, in the last analysis, into the right of 
accomplishing the destiny imposed upon him by 
his nature. It is the same with those collective 
individualities called societies : it is because they 
have an end that they have certain rights ; and 
with them, as with individuals, these rights are 
only and can only be the different consequences 
of the fundamental right of accomplishing this 
destiny. It follows from this that a society has the 
right of doing everything useful for the most per- 
fect accomplishment possible of its end; and as 
this end is the same for all — for the smallest as well 
as the largest societies—the right belonging to one 
belongs to all, and imposes the same respect, and 
consequently the same duties upon all in respect to 
each. Here, as in social ethics, duty is the correla- 
tive of right : the extent of the one determines the 
extent of the other, and both are occasioned and 
measured by the end of the being to which they 
relate. We must then know the end of society to 
determine the rights and duties of societies. The 
problem of the ethics of nations presupposes then 



METHOD OF SOLVING THE PROBLEM. 71 

the solution of the problem of politics ; it is subor- 
dinate to it like a consequence to its principle. 

We see realized, gentlemen, what we had fore- 
seen ; in seeking the necessary data for the solution 
of each problem, the dependencies existing between 
them are revealed ; and as these dependencies 
become manifest, we see a hierarchy unveiling 
itself, and becoming established between these 
questions. The ethics of nations presupposes poli- 
tics ; politics presuppose ethics ; and these three 
sciences themselves presuppose the solution of the 
problem of the destiny of man. This hierarchy of 
questions is the true order in which they should 
be approached. We see that so far all these ques- 
tions spring from the problem of man's destiny, as 
from a common root. The rights and duties of 
individuals, the end of society, the best organiza- 
tion of the political power, the rules which ought 
to govern in the relation of nations — these all im- 
ply — these all presuppose the knowledge of man's 
destiny in this w T orld : here is the light which should 
solve and make clear all these problems 

The great problem of man's destiny, however, is 
not itself simple : it is subdivided, and has been 
subdivided in all times into several other problems. 
These subdivisions have their origin in two events 
which commence and terminate our present life — 
our birth and death. Man, like all other created 



72 METHOD OF SOLVING THE PROBLEM. 

beings, having a certain nature, has also an end 
adapted to this nature. If the whole existence of 
man was inclosed within the limits of this life, it 
is evident that the whole destiny of man would be 
accomplished in this world. But does the existence 
of man really commence at the moment of his 
birth, does it really terminate at the moment of his 
death? These are two questions upon which it 
would not be wise to pronounce lightly. Thus, as 
w r e have said, it is at least doubtful whether birth 
is a true commencement, and death a true end. If 
the life of man commenced before the hour of his 
birth, and is to be prolonged after the hour of his 
death, his present would be but a fragment of his 
total life, and his destiny here would be but a chap- 
ter of his w T hole destiny : in other words, his des- 
tiny, like his existence, would not have, in this 
w r orld, either its true beginning or true end ; and 
the part which man performs on earth would be 
but the middle of a drama, the opening of which 
would have taken place in a former life, and the 
end to take place at a future period. Suppose the 
premises proved, the consequence is inevitable. 
But if the consequence is proved, the premises are 
likewise proved. Let us in fact admit that in 
examining the end which man accomplishes here, 
in this world, we recognize the fact that it is not 
sufficient for itself, that it is but a mutilated drama, 



METHOD OF SOLVING THE PROBLEM. 73 

^'liicli wants cither a beginning or an end, or both 
at once : does it not follow strictly, either that man 
has existed previously to the present life or that he 
will survive it, or both together? Undoubtedly, 
gentlemen. We have then two ways open to pass 
beyond the limits of the present life. Humanity 
has followed both, and the belief of humanity 
seems to testify that it has not done so uselessly. 
Without giving credit to this belief, it is sufficient 
that the doubt exists ; it is sufficient that in regard 
to this doubt, life and death, the nature of man, 
and his present destiny can be interrogated and can 
give an answer; for science has no right to sup- 
press, without examination, questions which the 
whole world ask themselves, and to declare a priori 
that the entire life, and, consequently, the entire 
destiny of man is inclosed between the cradle and 
tomb. 

Man's destiny like his existence, and his exist- 
ence like his destiny, can be divided into three dis- 
tinct parts : one certain, which has for its limits 
birth and death, the other two possible beyond 
these two limits. The question of man's destiny in 
this world does not, therefore, embrace the whole 
problem of man's destiny ; in addition to this first 
question, two others arise — has man existed before 
his appearance in this world, and if he has existed, 
what was his destiny in that former life ? will man 

4 



74 METHOD OF SOLVING THE PROBLEM. 

live after death, and if he is to survive, what will 
be his destiny in this future life? 

These last two questions belong to religion ; the 
first belongs to morality properly so called ; from 
the solution of these three questions results the 
solution of the general problem of man's destiny. 

Such are, gentlemen, the elements of the problem 
of man's destiny. Now, there are two of these 
three questions into which it can be resolved, which 
manifestly presuppose the solution of the third. 
To learn if man has existed before this life, and 
will live after it, I have already said, gentlemen, 
that there are but two facts to interrogate — first 
his nature — secondly his destiny in this world. 
Let us suppose that his nature faithfully analyzed 
is sufficient to solve the question and answer it 
affirmatively : it will still remain to determine 
man's destiny in these two lives — the one before 
and the other after the present life. To penetrate 
into the mystery of these two portions of our des- 
tiny which are unknown to us, there is evidently 
but one way, this is to examine the portion which 
we can know, that is to say, the destiny which man 
accomplishes in this world. If man has existed 
previously to the present life and will survive it, 
the destiny accomplished by man in this world 
must w r ant a true commencement and a true end. 
The commencement which w 7 e find is presupposed 



METHOD OF BOLTING TIIE PROBLEM. 75 

by man's destiny here, and the end demanded la 
precisely the anterior and posterior destiny sought 
for. Tims even while supposing that the nature of 
man is sufficient to prove an anterior and posterior 
life, the problem of man's destiny, in these two 
lives, would always presuppose the knowledge of 
his destiny in this. For a still stronger reason 
would it suppose this knowledge, if the nature of 
man could not by itself make clear the question of 
the past and future life, and if we were obliged to 
have recourse to the destiny of man in this world 
to solve it. In every way, then, the religious pro-' 
blem and the two questions embraced by it, pre- 
suppose the solution of the moral problem, or the 
knowledge of man's destiny here. The religious 
problem is to be approached, then, only after the 
moral problem in the legitimate order of our inves- 
tigations. 

And now, gentlemen, if the destiny accom- 
plished by man upon earth is not his whole des- 
tiny — if this destiny has, without the limits of this 
life, a commencement and a continuation which 
explain it — it follows that we cannot have a true 
understanding, not only of the whole destiny of 
man, but even of his present destiny, as long as 
we limit our investigations to the limits of the 
moral problem, and as long as we have not ex- 
tended them to the problem of religion. Conse- 



76 METHOD OF SOLVING TIIE PROBLEM. 

quently all the questions which presuppose the 
solution of the moral problem presuppose, also, the 
solution of the religious problem. It is for this 
reason, gentlemen, that I make natural ethics, poli- 
tics and the ethics of nations subordinate to the 
religious problem. Undoubtedly these three sci- 
ences have nothing directly to do with the destiny 
of man out of this life ; the destiny of man here 
is the only datum which they demand. But can 
we say that we possess this datum, is it possible 
for us to have a complete knowledge of man's 
destiny in this world when we know it alone, 
when we separate it from its antecedents and its 
consequents, w T hen we do not see it in its place, 
between its past and future destiny, following after 
the one and preparatory to the other ? No, gentle- 
men. Without religion, morality is not intelligi- 
ble ; and we cannot deduce natural ethics, politics 
and the ethics of nations from a morality which is 
not intelligible. Thus all the grand doctrines pro- 
duced by these three problems, bear the mark of 
the religious opinions under the reign of which they 
were brought forth., and there is not a single grand 
religious doctrine which has not modified the 
thoughts of humanity upon these problems. The 
examination of the religious question precedes 
then the examination of these questions in our 
investigations : such is the place which reason 



METIIOD OF SOLVING THE PROBLEM. 77 

assigns it in the hierarchy of problems proposed 
by us. 

I have said, gentlemen, that the question of 
man's destiny leads to that of the destiny of the 
species. The history of religions testifies to the 
intimate alliance of these two questions. AVe 
behold all religions associating together the solu- 
tions of the two problems, as if one could not make 
progress without the other in the thoughts of 
humanity. In addition to this experience of ages, 
our experience teaches us that we cannot meditate 
along time upon ourselves, without thinking of the 
species of which we form a part — without asking 
ourselves the question whence it comes, toward 
what it is advancing, and where the revolutions 
which continually modify its condition have carried 
it or are leading it ; in a word, what is the mean- 
ing and the plot of the long drama which it plays 
on this earth? I have already shown you that a 
strange anxiety is awakened even in the least cul- 
tivated minds, and that thus the question of the 
destiny of the species is not less human than the 
question of the destiny of the individual, in the 
train of which it appears constantly. We will not 
break, gentlemen, a connection so natural, and our 
investigations will go as far as the thoughts of 
humanity. The question of the destiny of the 
species will occupy our attention in turn ; we will 



78 METHOD OF SOLVING THE PROBLEM. 

assign it its proper place in the scientific order of 
the problems. 

Undoubtedly, gentlemen, the history of human- 
ity is the principal element in the solution of this 
problem. We can even strictly attempt to solve 
it with this element alone, and it is in this way that 
philosophers have constantly proceeded in modern 
times. Take the oldest nations recorded in history, 
find out their condition and the spirit which ani- 
mated them, see what became of this spirit, "what 
modifications this condition underwent in the na- 
tions inheriting it, continue the same labor from 
people to people up to the present time, and as the 
first nations are unknown to us, study, in order to 
fill up this gap, savage tribes, examine obscure tra- 
ditions and the few monuments of the primitive 
period ; then, from all the elements given by this 
vast labor, try to deduce the march of humanity, 
and from this progress the law governing jt : this is 
what can be undertaken with erudition alone, and 
this is what has been attempted. But, gentlemen, 
although there is not a single one of these histori- 
cal elements but what is useful, perhaps indispensa- 
ble to the solution of the problem, I do" not think 
that they alone can give it. By what do we com- 
prehend the actions of our fellow beings? by the 
knowledge we have of ourselves : the motives ope- 
rating in us reveal to us those which operate in 



METHOD OF SOLVING THE PROBLEM. 79 

them ; the secret of our conduct explains to us the 
enigma of theirs ; the better we know each other 
the more perfect is the revelation ; without this 

knowledge, their acts would be an unintelligible 
spectacle to us. The understanding of history is 
subject to the same law. Man, being the element 
of humanity, contains all the motives which can 
move humanity. The end of man being the 
aggregate of all these motives, man imposes his 
end upon the whole of humanity, as he imposes 
it upon each of the societies which makeup human- 
ity. In other words, the life of a society is nothing 
more than the striving after their end of the indi- 
viduals composing it, and the life of humanity 
nothing more than the succession of these strivings. 
To comprehend the nature and result of each of 
these efforts, we must know the end of man and 
the end of society, which are the aim of these 
efforts. For if we are ignorant of the end, toward 
which societies aspire unceasingly without ever 
completely attaining it, we will never be able either 
to discern the meaning and the reach of their 
efforts, or* appreciate the greater or less value of 
the results obtained; and we will read the history 
of each nation, without discovering in it the work 
of that people in the grand labor of humanity. If 
the nature and value of each one of the elements 
of this great labor escape us, how shall we be able 



80 METHOD OF SOLVING THE PROBLEM. 

to seize the law according to which this labor has 
been accomplished up to the present time? And 
if the law according to which it was accomplished 
in the past is unknown to us, how shall we infer 
the law it will follow in the future ? And how-, 
finally, shall we rise to the general and whole law 
of this development — to the law of humanity that 
we are seeking — the solution of the problem which 
perplexes us, of the problem of the destiny of the 
species? If there is one thing clearer than the 
light of day, it is this, that the facts of history, 
such as simple erudition gives them, are not suffi- 
cient to solve the problem of the destiny of human- 
ity ; that, so long as we have not meditated pro- 
foundly upon the end of man and society, these 
facts remain veritable hieroglyphics of which we 
have not the key ; that, finally, the problem which 
philosophy of history has for its aim to solve, pre- 
supposes the solution of all the problems which 
precede, and ought to come after them, in the 
legitimate order of our investigations. 

JSTow, gentlemen, I see but one question left 
which is intimately connected w T ith the grand pro- 
blem occupying our thoughts : it is the theological 
question, which is like the finishing of a building, 
the design of which we are drawing. The same 
law of reason, which in being applied by turns to 
the individual, to society or the species, makes man 



METHOD OF SOLVING THE PBOBLEM. $1 

conceive that individuals, societies and the species 
are in this world for a certain end, in being applied 
to the universe, in the midst of which humanity is 
but a phenomenon, makes him conceive also that 
this universe has an end, and as a part cannot be 
contradictory to the whole, that the end of human- 
ity must concur with this total end, that it must be 
but an element of it, and consequently must have 
in it its reason and final explanation. Thus by an 
irresistible tendency, thought rises from individual 
to social order, from social to human order, from 
human to universal order. There alone can it stop$ 
because there alone it meets the final answer of the 
enigma which perplexes it, the final reason of the 
phenomena the meaning of which it seeks. But I err, 
gentlemen ; it goes still further, and it must. Uni- 
versal order is itself but a law, a supreme law, it is 
true, which sums up all the others, and which con- 
tains the final reason of all phenomena, but which, 
in the ontological order, is nothing more than a fact, 
and presupposes an intelligent being who has con- 
ceived and consequently realized it. In other words, 
universal order supposes a universal maker, of 
whom it is at once the thought and work. Human 
intelligence then ascends even to God, and there it 
finally rests, because there it finally discovers the 
source of that immense stream which the inflexible 
logic of principles governing it obliges it to ascend. 

4* 



82 METHOD OF SOLVING THE PROBLEM. 

God found, the aspect of the universe changes: 
order becomes Providence, and the thousand 
branches of universal law become the thousand 
decrees of the divine will and wisdom. The human 
soul escapes joyfully from the rule of inflexible 
fatality, and submits with pleasure to the rule of 
the wisdom and goodness of God. The paternal 
relations of the Creator to the creature succeed the 
severe relations of the law and subject; and the 
supreme and final question, which was to learn the 
part played by the destiny of the human race in 
the whole destiny of the universe, clothed in more 
consoling forms, becomes that of learning what the 
designs of Providence are — that is, of a Being 
supremely wise for man — that is, for a being feeble 
by his power, but like Him and superior to all 
other beings by the gift of the intellect. Under this 
last form as well as the first, the theological pro- 
blem presupposes all those which we have hitherto 
considered, and others still which it draws after it 
in the vast problem of man's destiny. In fact, to 
understand the part performed by the destiny of the 
human species in the whole destiny of the universe, 
we must start at the same time from the end toward 
which we see humanity advancing and the end 
toward which the part of the physical world we 
can observe seems to gravitate. The knowledge of 
the physical world is thus introduced as an element 



METIIOD OF SOLVING THE PROBLEM. 83 

into the question : it takes a place there by the 
side of the question of man and humanity: and 
these two sciences become the two data of the ques- 
tion of God, or what comes to the same thing, of 
the question of order and the universal end of all 
things. From the bosom of this extensive knowl- 
edge, and by a comparison of the physical with the 
moral order, the question of the superiority of one 
of these two orders, and consequently of the sub- 
ordination of the other, arises, and is to be solved ; 
reason, casting, by turns, nature and man into her 
scales, finds herself called upon to decide whether 
nature is made for man, or man is only a fragment 
of nature; whether nature is the theatre prepared 
for the drama of our destiny, or we are but a drop 
of water, carried along with a thousand others in 
the current of a stream whose depths and banks, 
source and end are unkown to us. A most impor- 
tant and difficult question, which is the same as the 
thought of God, and which aspires to nothing less 
than an understanding of the enigma, a question 
which leads us to consider all the data which the 
creation can give us, in order to draw from them 
all the signs possible of the providence of the 
Creator — a question which being superior to and 
summing up all the others, has been almost always 
proposed and agitated before them, but which being 
capable of solution only by the light of the united 



84 METHOD OF SOLVING THE PROBLEM. 

solutions of all the others, ought not to be ap- 
proached until after them in the legitimate order 
of science. 

Such are, gentlemen, the questions which the 
general problem of human destiny embraces, and 
the rigorous order in which they ought to be ap- 
proached and solved. You see that they are not 
independent and isolated, but that they are united 
and form a system like the branches of a tree, all 
of which, from the smallest to the largest, are 
directly or indirectly connected with the trunk that 
nourishes and supports them. The common trunk 
of the questions noticed by us, is the particular 
question of man's destiny in this life : far or near, 
directly or indirectly, all are connected with this, 
all presuppose its solution. This, gentlemen, is 
then the first question which science must strive to 
solve. It will be the first object of our investiga- 
tions, and as it is extensive, it will be the subject 
of our lectures for the first year. Let us then for- 
get the whole outline of the system we have just 
sketched, let us forget all the other problems which 
compose it, and let us concentrate our whole atten- 
tion upon the moral problem, the only one which 
must hereafter occupy us. 

In approaching this problem, we will remain 
faithful to the spirit which presides over these lec- 
tures. In the first place and before anything else 



METHOD OF SOLVING TOE PROBLEM. 85 

we will endeavor to understand perfectly the mean- 
ing of it, then we will consider the means existing, 
and determine the method which must be followed : 
finally, the goal ascertained and the route marked 
out, we will advance. 

Three forms have been given to the moral pro- 
blem since it has been discussed. The first is that 
under which I myself Have placed it, "What is the 
destiny of man in this world ? r ' The second is that 
which prevailed in the Greek schools, and which 
can be called its antique form : " What is the true 
or sovereign good for man ?" The third is that 
which prevails in our time, and which has become 
its ordinary form : " What are man's duties, or 
what is the rule which ought to govern his con- 
duct?" I will show you in a few words that 
these questions cover the same problem : in disen- 
gaging it from these three forms, I shall attain 
my first object, which is to establish its true mean- 
ing. 

Evidently, gentlemen, if all things were indiffer- 
ent to us, we would have no reason for acting in 
one way rather than another, and consequently we 
would have no reason for acting at all. In order 
to act, we must will to act ; to act in one way 
rather than in another is to prefer ; we could wish 
for nothing, we could prefer nothing, if our nature 
had been constituted in such, a wav that there was 



86 METHOD OF SOLVING THE PROBLEM. 

nothing good or nothing preferable for it. Our 
nature acts because there is a good for it ; it 
chooses because there is a good and an evil ; if it 
is good for it to do certain things, and if it is bad 
for it to do certain other things, this arises also 
from the same reason. From which you see, gen- 
tlemen, there is no reason for our asking what is 
good for man to do, unless there is a good for him, 
and you see that the only way of learning what he 
is to do, is to determine in what consists this gtfod. 
Then the question of learning whether there is a 
morality or a possible rule for our actions is pre- 
cisely the same as learning whether there is a good 
and an evil for us : and the question of knowing 
what is this morality or this rule is precisely the 
same as knowing in what consist the good and evil 
for us. These two last questions are then but one 
and the same problem under different forms. Only, 
when we ask in what the good and evil consist for 
man, we propose the questions under a more pro- 
found form ; for the rule being the consequence 
and the good the principle, we must, in order to 
establish the rule, have previously determined in 
w T hat the good consists. 

Now, gentlemen, if you wish to find out in what 
way things appear to us good or bad, or what our 
intellect means when it calls them so, you will per- 
ceive that the question, "In what does good and 



METHOD OF SOLVING THE PROBLEM. 87 

evil consist ?" is in turn identical with the other, 
11 Whdt is our destiny in this world?" 

In fact, gentlemen, whatever case you choose to 
take, and in whatever situation you choose to place 
yourself, you will always find that if you call such 
a thing good and such a thing bad, it is because 
the first agrees with your nature — is in harmony 
with its end — while the second is repugnant to 
your nature, is in opposition to its true end. A 
common example will make you understand my 
meaning. 

Is it not true, gentlemen, that if we had not been 
so organized as to feel a certain appetite called 
hunger, and another called thirst, everything assist- 
ing to satisfy these appetites would be absolutely 
indifferent to us ? Is it not true that without the 
existence in us of these appetites, bread and water 
would be neither good nor bad for us ? And would 
the act of drinking and the act of eating be called 
good, and would we have any cause for doing these 
acts, without the existence of these appetites ? 
Certainly not. The final cause of the goodness of 
bread and water, the final reason of the name 
which we apply to the acts of drinking and eating 
is in the constitution of our nature, and in the 
agreement existing between its end on the one 
hand and these things and acts on the other : in 
other words, it is the property they possess of sat- 



88 METHOD OF SOLVING THE PROBLEM. 

isfying certain tendencies of our nature, and of thus 
assisting in this relation the accomplishment of our 
end, which constitutes their goodness, and consti- 
tutes it exclusively. If you suppress these appe- 
tites in us, these same acts, these same things, 
would become completely indifferent to us ; they 
would have no longer any character for us. But 
in this very hypothesis, if we knew that a certain 
being was endowed with these two appetites, 
although bread and water, and the act of eating 
and drinking, were entirely indifferent to us, we 
would not the less incite that these things and acts 
w r ere good for this being, and we would call them 
so in relation to it. 

"What is true in this case, gentlemen, is true in 
all, and this trivial example reveals to you the fact 
that there exist good and evil for man and for 
every being. The reason that good and evil exist 
for a being is that it has received from God a cer- 
tain nature, and with this nature a certain destiny, 
which is the consequence of it and to which it 
aspires. The accomplishment of this destiny is for 
a being, I will not say the supreme good, but the 
only good ; the non-accomplishment is the only 
evil. All that is good for a being is so only for 
the reason that it contributes to this sole good ; all 
that is bad is so for the reason that it contributes to 
this one evil. Therefore, to determine what is 



METHOD OF SOLVING THE PROBLEM. 89 

good or bad for a being, we must have ascertained 
previously in what consist for it this supreme good 
and evil ; that is to say, gentlemen, we must have 
previously ascertained what the end, what the des- 
tiny of this being is. From which you perceive 
that the question, In vjhat does evil and good con- 
sist for man — what is the true, the supreme good 
for him — is precisely the same as, What is the des- 
tiny of man in this world ? Only, of these two 
forma of the same problem, the last is the most 
profound ; for we must know what the end of man in 
this world is to determine what is his good, as we 
have seen that we must know what his good is to 
determine what he must do,' and thus ascertain the 
rule of his conduct. 

You see, gentlemen, that in the final analysis 
the problem is the same as is expressed in the three 
questions we have just described ; but it appears 
in them taken at different degrees of profoundness. 
Under whatever form the question may first be 
put, we must always, to solve it, end by bringing 
it back to the most profound, to that which clearly 
exposes the true difficulty. It is this, then, which 
is the true form — the scientific form of the problem ; 
it is also under this form that we have proposed 
the question. The meaning of the problem being 
fixed, let* us come to the method to be followed in 
order to solve it 



90 METHOD OF SOLVING THE TEOBLEM. 

Two ways are open to us : one consists in search- 
ing for the solution of the question in the nature 
of man, the other in searching for it in the specta- 
cle of human life which we have under our eyes- 
The last of these two ways is indirect, and strewed 
with uncertainties ; the only prompt and sure 
method for learning the destiny of man, is to seek 
it by an exact analysis of the constituent principles 
of his nature. 

And yet the last of these two methods does not 
seem, at first glance, to be the most natural ; nor 
has it been the most commonly followed ; in gene- 
ral the other has been preferred, on account of an 
argument apparently just, but which takes no 
account of the practical difficulties of the method 
for the support of which the argument is made. 

The choice of its end does not depend at all upon 
a being : the end is imposed upon it by its nature, 
which it cannot change, and it aspires necessarily 
toward that end. Man cannot change his nature 
any more than any other being, and this nature 
cannot become unfaithful to its own principles any 
more than any other nature. Man is then inflexi- 
bly determined to tend toward his end ; - it is suffi- 
cient to prove tow r ard what man is progressing, to 
learn his true end. That is the reasoning, gentle- 
men ; the premises are correct, but two circum- 
stances have not been attended to* which will not 



METHOD OF SOLVING THE PROBLEM. 01 

allow us to admit the consequence ; the first is, 
that man is intelligent and free ; the second is, that 
the end of man in practice is resolved into a mul- 
titude of particular ends, and the movement of 
human nature toward that end is resolved into a 
multitude of partial and different tendencies. 
Without these two circumstances, the method 
which pretends to find the end of man in the spec- 
tacle of human affairs would be successful; but 
these two circumstances render it blind and ineffec- 
tual, as you will readily understand by what fol- 
lows. 

The primitive tendencies through which human 
nature manifests its end, and aspires to it, are not 
very numerous ; and when we study them directly 
in the sanctuary of the consciousness, where they 
act upon the will and determine the conduct, it is 
easy to separate them, and to comprehend the defi- 
nite and total end toward which they conspire. 
This movement, however simple at its source, is 
broken by coming in contact with external things, 
and is separated into an infinite multitude of differ- 
ent pursuits. In fact, the world which surrounds 
us presents to each passion of our nature an infi- 
nity of different aims, and although the passion 
remains the same in the consciousness, it receives, 
from without, from this diversity of ends toward 
which it aspires, an infinite diversity of forms 



92 METHOD OF SOLVING THE PROBLEM. 

which disguise it in a thousand ways, and trans- 
form it for the spectator into a multitude of dis- 
tinct passions. Isot only is the spectator, but the 
actor even is deceived ; each of us, preoccupied 
with the particular good we are pursuing, takes 
the passion driving us on for a different one from 
that of our neighbor, in whom it aspires to a differ- 
ent end ; it is thus that, for all of us, what is sim- 
ple within — the demand of human nature — is 
transformed without into a variety of directions 
and pursuits which almost equals the number of 
the grains of sand on the seashore. 

This is not all, gentlemen ; while external things 
thus break the aim of our nature into a thousand 
fragments, our nature, because it is intelligent and 
free, neglects the whole for a part, and appears in 
each individual to attach itself exclusively to some 
of these fragments, and to forget the rest. Experi- 
ence proves that man chooses among this multitude 
of particular aims, into which our end is separated 
externally, that this choice varies infinitely from 
individual to individual, and that often man makes 
an absurd choice, sacrificing the highest interests of 
his nature for petty ones. There are very few men, 
if any, that embrace the end of man in its whole 
meaning, and who pursue its entire accomplish- 
ment. Almost all are the slaves of a particular 
passion, taken up with an exclusive good ; and in 



METHOD OF SOLVING THE PROBLEM. 93 

the service of this passion, in the acquisition of this 
good, they waste all their activity, all their efforts, 
their whole life. Hence, gentlemen, the infinite 
diversity of opinions upon what deserves truly to 
occupy the thought and energy of man. Each in- 
dividual has, so to speak, a particular opinion on 
this point, and each society has its own. If you 
survey the thousand different worlds which this 
great city contains, you will be amazed to see that 
what agitates and absorbs one, appears of little im- 
portance, or of no importance at all to another. 
[Not only, then, does the end of man, simple within, 
appear divided externally into a multitude of parti- 
cular aims, but by the exclusive and different 
choices of human liberty among these aims, it 
would seem that in place of a common end for us 
all, there were as many ends as individuals, and 
that each of us had our own. 

These are the two circumstances, gentlemen, 
which, as I have already told you, render ineffect- 
ual the method, claiming to be able to deduce the 
end of man from the spectacle of human actions. 
Undoubtedly this method is correct when it sup- 
poses that the multitude of different directions into 
which the small number of the primitive tenden- 
cies of our nature branches out in the outer world, 
express like them the demand of our nature. All 
these directions in fact emanate from these tenden- 



94 METHOD OF SOLVING THE PROBLEM. 

cies, which arc only the different expressions of a 
single fundamental desire — the desire which carries 
our nature toward its end. But who does noc see 
immediately that of these two translations, one 
direct and made up of a small number of signs, the 
other far-fetched and containing a multitude, it is 
absurd, when both are equally under our eyes, to 
neglect the first in order to question the second ? 
And again, who does not understand that we can- 
not read the end of man through this last, except 
on the condition of tracing back all the different 
directions of the external life, to the small number 
of internal tendencies from which they emanate, 
and that thus, under penalty of not succeeding, 
the preferred method is finally obliged to demand 
the solution of the moral problem from that which 
was rejected ? 

In fact, gentlemen, and mark this well, when 
you have been successful, with an almost impossi- 
ble accuracy, in gathering together all the differ- 
ent aims pursued by men in this world, you will 
still have only an aggregation of particular aims, 
and it will remain for you to reduce this immense 
list and to extract from all these particular ends 
the small number of principal ones of which they 
are the variations only. Now, this induction is 
only possible conditionally ; the condition is that 
we neglect the external conduct of man and ques- 



METHOD OF SOLVING THE PROBLEM. 95 

tion the motives of his conduct and the principles 
of his nature. Indeed, all these different courses 
in the outer world do not unite ; it is only in the 
inner that they do so. Outwardly, the aims pur- 
sued are distinct, and the courses different ; you 
will find nothing there which will warrant you in 
identifying them. But these different courses may 
be suggested within by the same passion, by the 
same principle of our nature, so that, notwithstand- 
ing the difference of the external aims, they may 
have only one and the same end: in this way 
courses the most diverse in appearance may yet be- 
identical. But where are these identities revealed ? 
They are revealed in what constitutes them, that is, 
in the principles of our nature. You cannot then 
pronounce upon the identity or the difference of 
two courses except by the knowledge itself of the 
fact which you claim to deduce from them : that 
is, from the motive which has determined them. 
This method is, therefore a circle, since it supposes 
that which we are trying to discover. And this 
is so true, that an action can be produced by the 
most opposite motives, without ceasing to be the 
same. The maxims of La Rochefoucauld are a 
striking proof. Take all possible actions — take 
them as they are and such as they appear to a 
spectator ; La Rochefoucauld takes upon himself 
to prove that there is not one, not even those which 



96 METHOD OF SOLVING THE PROBLEM. 

appear to be the most generous, that cannot be ex- 
plained by a personal motive, and in fact that there 
is no action whatever that cannot be produced by 
such a motive. But does it follow that they are 
never produced by a disinterested motive ? Cer- 
tainly not : they are produced sometimes by a dis- 
interested, sometimes by a personal motive. And 
how, in a given case, can we learn by which of the 
two they are produced ? They themselves cannot 
teach us : it is the secret of the conscience which 
performs them. If we confine ourselves to ques- 
tioning human actions, we can never arrive at any- 
thing certain in regard to the motives which deter- 
mine them, nor consequently in regard to the true 
ends of human conduct: they lend themselves with 
the same facility to the most different. interpreta- 
tions, and justify with the same ease the most 
opposite systems. It is then impossible to deduce 
the solution of the problem of human destiny 
from the spectacle of human actions. We must 
therefore search elsewhere the revelation of this 
destiny ; we must seek it where it is written in 
fixed and certain characters ; that is, in the con- 
stituent principles of human nature. 

This question, presupposed by all those that are 
to occupy our attention — this fundamental ques- 
tion of the destiny of man in this world — presup- 
poses itself a still more fundamental one: the 



METHOD OF SOLVING THE PROBLEM. 97 

question of the nature of man. lie who is igno- 
rant of the nature of man cannot solve the ques- 
tion ; he who knows but imperfectly this nature, 
can only find an incomplete solution : this is not 
merely true ; it can be strictly proved. For, the 
question of man's destiny in this world is not a 
question of fact — a question which observation can 
immediately solve. That man has an end in this 
world, reason conceives necessarily ; but this end 
is not an observable fact, which falls under the 
consciousness and senses ; it is nothing more than 
a general idea to be made definite, which can be 
done only through facts. So long as we have not 
reached a question of facts in an investigation, we 
have not discovered the true beginning. We can- 
not guess at the designs of God, which are the 
laws of the creation ; we must discover them, and 
we can only discover them by the study of the 
small portion of his works which he permits to our 
observation. All light issues from our observa- 
tion, and every search, unless it be impossible, 
conceals in its bosom a question of fact by which 
it can be s-olved. The genius of method, which is 
the genius of science, consists entirely in discover- 
ing this question, in expressing it as a problem. 
That done, all is doue : for the outline is sketched, 
and human patience goes on perfecting it by filling 
up the outline. In the inquiry occupying us, this 



98 METHOD OF SOLVING THE PROBLEM. 

question of fact is that of man's nature. The na- 
ture of man is a thing that can be observed, a 
reality which exists and is present to our Bight. 
To ascertain it, we have no need of any anterior 
data ; it is sufficient to open the eyes of conscious- 
ness and observe. We now recognize a question 
which is truly the first ; we have now arrived at 
the true beginning of our inquiry. Man being 
known, the determination of his end follows : his 
end ascertained, determines the end of society and 
the species : and the end of humanity determined, 
the place of humanity in the work of creation 
can be legitimately sought. This is the outline of 
science, gentlemen — its strict and true outline. It 
is this outline which we shall endeavor to fill up. 



LECTURE III. 

THE MOEAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 

Gentlemen, there is but one duty for man — the 
duty of accomplishing his destiny — the duty of 
proceeding to his end. The end of man being 
given, the supreme rule of his conduct is also 
given. This is true, but what is also true is that 
the situations in which man can be placed are so 
numerous and so different, that it is not always 
easy for him to see how he should act in each of 
them, in order to accomplish this supreme duty. 

We have seen in the former lecture that the 
object of ethics or natural right is to find out the 
rules of human conduct ; that thus in its most com- 
prehensive meaning, this science embraces all the 
rules which ou^ht to direct man in this life. 

Before commencing our investigations, however, 
there is a previous question that I must examine 
and solve — it is, does there really exist a science of 
ethics ? Some philosophical systems, as you know, 
have attempted to prove that there are no obliga- 
tory rules for man, and that morality is reduced to 

£9 



100 THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 

counsels of prudence, which man can follow or 
neglect at his own peril. 

As such systems deny ethics, or at least change 
it so much that they take away its true character, 
and in that way, destroy its great importance, it 
seemed to me necessary, before entering into the 
science itself, to find out if the fact upon which it 
is founded exists, and to criticise the numerous 
systems which deny the fact or change it essen- 
tially. This question, as you perceive, must pre- 
cede all those which are the object of the present 
course; the question is, besides, of the highest 
importance, for it is nothing less than the know- 
ledge of the fact that there exists for man some 
obligatory rule of human conduct. The existence 
of duty, and consequently the existence of right, 
is implied in this question, which the profoundest 
minds in philosophy, in politics and legislation 
have discussed. 

To discuss the question before you, I have hesi- 
tated between two methods. I was in doubt 
whether it would be best to present these systems 
to you, and to refute them one after the other, and 
then exhibit to you the facts of human nature 
w r hich they have changed or not recognized ; or 
whether it would not be best, by sacrificing for the 
sake of clearness, whatever of advantage the appli- 
cation of this method might have, to commence by 



THE mokal facts of human nature. 101 

giving to you, in the first place, a description of the 
moral facts of human nature, in order that you 
might test, by the light of these facts, the different 
views which have resulted in different conclusions. 

I chose the last method. Notwithstanding all 
my efforts to make you understand the principle 
and tendency of each of these systems, I would be 
fearful of not succeeding, if I had not in the first 
place exhibited to you the moral facts of human 
nature — the common origin from which all systems 
of ethics draw their principles and their point of 
departure. I will commence, then, gentlemen, with 
a description as exact as possible of the principal 
moral facts of human nature. When you under- 
stand this description, I will then be able to pro- 
ceed to an explanation of the systems we are to 
criticise; and comparing the systems with facts, I 
shall be able to point out which of the facts have 
been neglected, which have been adopted, and to 
show thus both the point of departure of each, and 
what is true and false in each. In this way, you 
will understand more readily each of those systems, 
and the refutation of them will also be easier for 
me. 

1 will, therefore, devote this lecture to an expla- 
nation of the moral facts of human nature in their 
principal circumstances. 

One being is distinguished from another by its 



102 TIIK MORAL FACTS OV HUMAN WATUBE. 

organization. This is what distinguishes a plant 
from an animal, an. animal of one species from that 
of another. Each being has then its own peculiar 
nature ; and because it has its own peculiar nature, 
it is predestined by this nature to a certain end. 
If, for instance, the end of the bee is not the same 
as that of the lion, and if the lion's is not the same 
as man's, we can only understand the reason of it 
in the difference of their natures. Each being is, 
therefore, organized for a certain end in such a way 
that if w^e knew its nature completely, we could 
deduce its destination or end. The end of a being 
is what is called the good of the being. There is 
thus an absolute identity between the good, of a 
being and its end. The good of a being is the 
accomplishment of its end, the reaching the object 
for which it wan organized. 

As every being, because it is organized in a 
certain way, has, by virtue of this organization, a 
special end which is its good, so there is not a 
single being which is not endowed with a certain 
number of faculties, by means of which it can 
attain its end. In fact, as there results from the 
very constitution of a being a certain end for it, 
there wxnild be a contradiction, if nature, while 
giving such an organization to the being for the 
accomplishment of its good, had not at the same 
time bestowed some faculties, which would render 



THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 103 

it capable of reaching the end. Such a truth is 
necessary in the eyes of reason, and needs no verifi- 
cation by experience. It can, however, always be 
verified, if we will examine the nature of each 
being, the end imposed upon it, and the faculties 
given for reaching the end. We cannot find a 
single exception to the principles which I have just 
laid down. 

From these principles, it results that man, hav- 
ing a particular organization, has necessarily an 
end, the accomplishment of which is his good, and 
that being organized for this end, he has also 
necessarily the faculties indispensable for the 
accomplishment of the end. 

From the first moment of the existence of an 
organized being (and it is the same with beings 
not organized, although not so apparent), from the 
moment, I repeat, of its existence, its nature tends 
toward the end for which it has been constituted. 
From this fact result certain movements in the 
being, which, independently of all reflection, inde- 
pendently of all calculation, carry it to a certain 
number of particular ends, all of which, taken 
together, make up the total end of the being. 
These instinctive movements, which even in reason- 
able creatures possess not the slightest trace of 
deliberation, and which are manifested in man as 
soon as he is born, and are developed more and 



104 THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE* 

more intensely as lie grows older, I call the 
primitive and instinctive tendencies of human 
nature. 

Thus from the fact of the existence of man, there 
takes place in him what takes place in all possible 
beings, that is, in virtue of his organization, his 
nature aspires to its end by movements which 
later are called the passions, and which carry him 
irresistibly tow r ard this end. 

At the same time that the instinctive tendencies 
are developed in man, which impel him toward his 
end or good, the faculties given him by God for its 
attainment are put in motion under the influence 
of these tendencies, and endeavor to seize the 
objects toward w T hich they bear him. As soon as 
man exists, then, there spring up in him, on the 
one hand, the tendencies which are the expression 
of his nature ; on the other hand, the faculties 
given him for satisfying these tendencies. This is 
not the beginning of human life only, it is its foun- 
dation ; as long as life lasts, it exists on this 
foundation, which never changes, no matter what 
other phenomena appear. 

I think that I proved clearly, in the preceding 
lectures, that when these faculties, placed in us for 
the purpose of realizing the end to which the ten- 
dencies of our nature aspire, awake and are 
developed for the first time, they are developed 



THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 105 

in an indeterminate manner, and without a fixed 
direction. 

That which in truth causes our faculties to con- 
centrate themselve in order to gain their object, is 
the fact that in this life, such as it is, they meet 
with obstacles which do not permit them to reach 
it in any other way. I have already told you that 
if this world was the harmony of the forces of all 
beings composing the world, if all these forces, 
instead of counteracting each other, were developed 
equally and harmoniously, it would be sufficient 
for them to be developed merely, to reach their 
end without effort. But such is not the organiza- 
tion of this world, as you know ; we can define it 
rather as the place where all destinies meet in 
opposition, and consequently, where all the forces 
of the beings composing the world oppose each 
other 

It is the same with our nature as with every 
other ; while being developed in order to attain its 
end, it meets with obstacles which arrest it and 
impede it in its progress. . To make you under- 
stand more readily the fact that I have just men- 
tioned, I will take, as an example, one of the 
faculties of our nature — intelligence — which is 
charged with the satisfaction of our instinctive 
desire of knowledge. 

The intelligence, as you know, does not imine- 



106 THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 

diately discover the truth which it seeks. On the 
contrary, it meets with difficulties, uncertainties, 
darkness, in a word, obstacles of every kind, which 
prevent it from attaining the truth. Now, gentle- 
men, what happens when the intelligence, while 
developing itself thus primitively, sees nothing at 
all of what it is constituted to see ? It happens 
that spontaneously it rouses itself to overcome the 
obscurities which it meets w T ith — the difficulties 
which oppose its reaching its object. This effort is 
nothing less than the concentration, upon a single 
point, of the forces of the understanding previously 
dispersed. When the understanding is developed 
instinctively, it is not concentrated upon one point 
more than another, it pays attention to all equally ; 
it rays out, so to speak, in all the senses. Meeting, 
however, darkness on every side, it expends its 
whole strength successively upon each thing which 
is obscure. This phenomenon takes place spon- 
taneously, and it is a matter of great importance 
for morality to establish the fact ; for this spon- 
taneous movement is the first sign of the power 
which exists in ns of directing our faculties — in 
other words, the first manifestation of our will. 
Now, gentlemen, this concentration of the human 
force is an effort unnatural to man. Human 
nature, therefore, suffers every time it is obliged to 
make this concentration. Even now. with our 



THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 107 

faculties so disciplined and so exercised, it is 
always a very fatiguing thing for us to direct our 
faculties and to concentrate them perseveringly 
upon such or such a point. It is not, in fact, their 
primitive and natural way ; it is an exceptional 
way to which we are condemned by the condition 
of humanity. Therefore, after every effort of this 
kind, human nature returns with pleasure to the 
indeterminate development which is its natural 
mode of action ; to return to this mode is a repose 
for our nature. In human life, and especially in 
the primitive life of man, before reason has ap- 
peared, our faculties are developed alternately 
between these two methods : the indeterminate or 
natural method, and the concentrated or voluntary 
method. It is sufficient for me now to mention the 
fact merely ; later I shall draw important consequen- 
ces from it. Another fact which it is not less import- 
ant to 'notice, is, that no matter what efforts our 
faculties may make to satisfy the primitive tenden- 
cies of our nature, and to make our nature enjoy 
the good to which it aspires, these efforts can never 
give more than a very incomplete satisfaction — 
that is, a very imperfect good ; such is the law of 
this life, that man can never triumph over the hard 
conditions imposed on him. In this life, then, the 
complete satisfaction of our tendencies — the com- 
plete good — does not exist. 



108 THE MORAL TACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 

When our faculties, being exercised, succeed in 
satisfying our tendencies, in acquiring for our 
nature a part of the good to which it aspires, a 
phenomenon is produced in us called pleasure. 
The privation of good, or the check which our 
faculties experience when they pursue but are 
unable to attain it, produces in us another phe- 
nomenon called pain. Pleasure and pain are pro- 
duced in us, because w r e are not only active, but 
also sensitive. It is, in fact, because we are sensi- 
tive, that our nature rejoices or suffers, according 
as it succeeds or fails in the pursuit of good. 

We can readily imagine a nature active without 
being sensitive ; for such a being, there would 
always be an end — a good — tendencies bearing it 
toward this good — faculties rendering it capable of 
attaining the good, sometimes fortunate, sometimes 
unfortunate in the pursuit, but without the feeling 
of pleasure or pain. Such is the origin a*nd the 
true character of pleasure and pain ; and you per- 
ceive that these two phenomena are subordinate to 
good and evil. I beg of you to notice this par- 
ticularly, as good has often been confounded with 
pleasure, and evil with pain. They are entirely 
distinct. Good and evil are the success and 
failure in the pursuit of the ends to which our 
nature aspires: we could obtain the one and 
experience the other without there being eUier 



THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 109 

p A easure or pain ; it would be enough if we were 
not sensitive. But as we are sensitive, it is impos- 
sible for our nature not to rejoice when it succeeds 
in attaining that which is good for it, or not to 
suffer when it cannot attain it ; it is a law of our 
organization. Pleasure is then the consequence, 
and the sign of the realization of good in us ; pain 
the consequence and the sign of the privation of 
good. But the one is not more the good than the 
other is the evil. 

As every human being aspires to his good, 
rejoices when he attains it, suffers when he is 
deprived of it, he must love, must seek for every- 
thing which, without being his good, contributes 
to procure it for him, and feel an aversion for 
everything which prevents him from attaining his 
good. This is the reason that when our faculties, 
in the process of their development, meet with 
obstacles which assist or counteract their efforts, 
we experience for the former feelings of affection 
and love, and for the others aversion and hatred. 
From this it happens that our tendencies, that is, 
the great, the true passions of human nature, 
branch out, so to speak, while in the process of 
accomplishing their end, and are subdivided into 
a multitude of particular tendencies, also called the 
passions, but which we must distinguish carefully 
from the primitive passions which are developed in 



110 THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 

us by themselves, and independently of every 
external object, from the mere fact of our exist- 
ence, and which aspire to their end before reason 
has disclosed to us what this end is. The passions, 
on the other hand, which I call secondary, spring 
up in us only on meeting with external objects, 
which, while assisting or opposing the develop- 
ment of our primitive passions, excite them in us. 
We call the objects which assist our primitive ten- 
dencies useful, and those that oppose them hurtful. 
Such is the origin of the secondary passions and 
the ideas of the useful and hurtful. 

Some of our tendencies^ as for instance sympa- 
thy, make us feel kindly disposed toward others ; 
other tendencies do not, as for instance curiosity, or 
the desire of knowledge, and ambition or the love 
of power. In fact, although it is true that in 
infancy, and before reason reveals to us our own 
nature, all our tendencies are developed without 
our reflecting upon ourselves — that is, without 
egotism — yet some have no other result than our 
own satisfaction, our own good, while sympathy 
has for its aim not only our own good, but also the 
good of others : for it is important to remark that 
if we wish well to others when reason intervenes at 
a later period, it is not only by virtue of reason, it 
is also by virtue of one of our tendencies — sym- 
pathy — which, independently of all idea of duty 



THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. Ill 

and of all calculation of interest, impels us to wish 
the good of others as its proper end. The principle 
is personal, but the object toward which it aspires 
spontaneously is the good of others. Thus, even 
when there are only instinctive movements in man, 
he still has a kindly feeling for others. 

All the facts that I have so far presented to yon, 
constitute the primitive state of man — infancy. 
AVhen reason appears, it causes this primitive state 
to experience successively two transformations, 
from which result two other moral states entirely 
distinct. Before passing to a description of these 
two other states, let us review, briefly, the consti- 
tuent elements of the first. I have already told 
you that at the very commencement of life, certain 
tendencies are developed in man, and manifest the 
end for which he was created ; that at the same 
time are also awakened certain faculties designed 
to satisfy these tendencies ; that the development 
of these faculties is in the first place naturally inde- 
terminate, but that the obstacles which they meet 
w T ith arouse them accidentally to a concentration, 
which is the first manifestation or the first step of 
voluntary development. You have seen that 
human nature, being , sensitive, experiences plea- 
sure when its tendencies are satisfied, and pain 
when they are not ; that, besides, it loves that 
which assists the development of our tendencies, 



112 Till: MORAL FACTS OF HITMAN NATTRE. 

and feels aversion for that which opposes them; 
thus our primitive passions branch out into a 
multitude of secondary passions, like the branches 
of a tree. Such are the elements of the primitive 
state. The characteristic of this state, the distin- 
guishing mark, is the exclusive dominion of pas- 
sion. Undoubtedly there is in the fact of concen- 
tration a commencement of self-control, and a 
commencement of a direction of our faculties by 
our personal power ; but this power is still blind, 
and remains exclusively devoted to the service of 
the passion, which determines fatally the action 
and direction of our faculties. This is the case, 
until reason appears. It is the reason which with- 
draws the power or will of man from the exclusive 
dominion of the passions ; before reason awakes, 
the present passion, and among the present pas- 
sions that which is the strongest, drags the will 
along with it, because man has as yet no fore- 
knowledge of future ill. Thus the triumph of the 
present passion over the future passion, and among 
the present passions the triumph of the strongest 
is, in the first state, the law of human determina- 
tions. The will exists, but there is as yet no 
liberty. 

We have already power over our faculties, but 
we cannot as yet make use of them freely. Let us 
examine now what transformation the reason, when 



THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 113 

appearing, causes this primitive state to undergo — 
the state of infancy. 

The reason, in its simplest definition, is the 
faculty of comprehending, which must not be con- 
founded with the faculty of knowing. In fact, 
animals know, but they do not seem to compre- 
hend, and it is this which distinguishes them from 
man. If they understood, they would be like us ; 
and instead of remaining during their whole lives, 
as they do, in the state we have just described, they 
would elevate themselves successively, like man, to 
the two other states which the intervention of 
reason produces in us. 

"When reason awakes in man, it finds human 
nature in full development, all its tendencies in 
play, all it£ faculties in activity. By virtue of its 
nature, that is, by the power which it possesses of 
comprehending, it soon finds out the meaning of 
the spectacle presented to it. In the first place, it 
comprehends that all these tendencies, that all 
these faculties aspire and advance only to one and 
the same end, to a total end, so to speak, which is 
the satisfaction of human nature. This satisfaction 
of our nature, which is the sum and resultant of 
the satisfaction of all of these tendencies, is then its 
true end — its true good. It is to this good that it 
aspires through all its passions ; it is to this good 
that it endeavors to attain through all its faculties. 



114 THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATTRK. 

This is what the reason comprehends, and in this 
way it forms the general idea of good ; and 
although this good, the idea of which we thus 
obtain, is still only our particular good, it is not the 
less a great advance beyond the primitive state, in 
which this idea does not exist at all. 

Observation and experience of what is perpetu- 
ally passing in us make our reason understand 
also that the complete satisfaction of human nature 
is impossible, and that, consequently, to count upon 
a complete good, is an illusion ; that therefore we 
can and ought to expect only the greatest good 
possible — that is, the greatest satisfaction possible 
of our nature. Reason rises, then, from the idea 
of our good, to the idea of our greatest possible 
good. [ 

Reason soon conceives also that everything 
which can lead us to the greatest good, is good 
from that fact alone, and everything that can turn 
us from it is bad ; but it never confounds this 
double property, which it meets with in certain 
objects, with good itself and evil itself— that is, 
with the satisfaction or non-satisfaction of our 
nature. It distinguishes clearly good in itself 
from those things which are adapted to produce it, 
and by generalizing the common property of those 
things, it rises to the general idea of the useful. 

It distinguishes also the satisfaction and non-sat- 



THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 115 

refaction of the tendencies of our nature from the 
agreeable and disagreeable sensations which accom- 
pany it in our sensibility, and pleasure is for it a 
different thing from good or the useful, and pain a 
different thing from evil or the hurtful; and, as 
it created the general idea of good and the idea 
of the useful, -by summing up what there is of 
common in all the agreeable sensations, it creates 
the general idea of happiness. 

Thus we have good, the useful, happiness — three 
ideas which the reason deduces immediatelv from 
the spectacle of our nature, and which are perfectly 
distinct in all languages, because all languages are 
made by the common sense, which is the truest 
expression of the reason. From that moment man 
possesses the secret of what passes within him. 
Up to that time man had lived without understand- 
ing himself; on that day he gains this knowledge. 
He sees whence these passions spring and what they 
demand ; he knows how these faculties are deter- 
mined, for what purposes they are useful, and what 
they do ; he knows why he loves and why he hates 
that which he loves and hates ; he knows why he 
experiences pleasure and pain from that w r hich 
gives him pleasure and pain : everything becomes 
clear to him, and he owes it to reason. 

But reason does not stop here ; it comprehends 
also that in the condition to which man is actually 



116 THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 

subjected, the empire over oneself, or the govern- 
ment of man over his faculties or the forces within 
him, is the condition without which he cannot 
reach the greatest possible satisfaction of his 
nature. 

Indeed, so long as our faculties are abandoned to 
the impulse of the passions, they obey always the 
passion actually dominant, which has a double dis- 
advantage. In the first place, nothing being more 
variable than passion, the dominion of one passion 
is soon replaced by that of another, so that under 
the rule of the passions, there is no possible regular 
sequence in the action of our faculties, and nothing 
great can be produced. Secondly, the good which 
results from the passion actually dominant is often 
the cause of a great evil, and the evil which might 
result from its non-satisfaction might often be the 
principle of a great good, so that nothing is less 
adapted to produce our greatest good than the 
government of our faculties by the passions. 
Reason soon discovers this, and concludes that to 
reach our greatest possible good, it would be better 
that the human energy should not remain a prey to 
the mechanical impulse of the passions. That in 
place of being hurried away by their impulse to 
satisfy at each moment the passion actually domi- 
nant, it would be better for our energy to be freed 
from this impulse, and directed exclusively to the 



THE MORAL FACTS OF fitilCfclt NATURE. 117 

realization of self-interest well understood of the 
whole of all these passions — that is to say, of the 
greatest good of our nature. -N r ow this better tiling 
which our reason conceives, our reason conceives 
also that it is in our power to realize. It depends 
upon ourselves to estimate the greatest good of our 
nature ; it is sufficient for us to employ our reason 
for this purpose ; and it depends also upon us to 
gain the mastery over our faculties and to subject 
them to the service of this idea of our reason. For 
we possess this power; it was revealed to us and 
we perceived it in the spontaneous effort by which, 
in order to satisfy the passion, we concentrated 
upon a single point all the forces of our faculties. 
As soon as we do voluntarily what we have done 
already spontaneously, the power of the will is 
created. At the yoyj moment that this great revo- 
lution is conceived, it is accomplished. A new 
principle of action is created in us — interest well 
understood, a principle which is no longer a pas- 
sion, but an idea, which does not spring blindly 
and instinctively from the conditions of our nature, 
but which proceeds intelligibly and reasonably 
from the reflections of our reason ; a principle no 
longer an impulse, but a motive. Finding support 
in this motive, the natural power we have over our 
faculties takes possession of these faculties, and 
striving to govern them according to the dix ction 



IIS THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 

of this motive, begins to be independent of the 
passions, to develop itself and gather strength. 
From that moment human energy is withdrawn 
from the inconsistent, variable and stormy empire 
of the passions, and subjected to the law of reason, 
calculating the greatest possible satisfaction of our 
tendencies — that is, our greatest good ; that is, again, 
the interest well understood of our nature. 

Such is, gentlemen, the new r moral state, or the 
new mode of determination which the appearance 
of reason produces in man. Interest well under- 
stood, substituted for the partial ends to which our 
passions carry us, is the end, self-control, the means. 
What is changed from the first state, is the direct 
dominion of the passions over the human faculties. 
Between-these two powers a third intervenes, the 
power of the reason and the will, the one laying 
down an end to the conduct, the other directing 
the human faculties toward this end. 

You must not suppose, gentlemen, that after 
this revolution is accomplished in us by the rea- 
son, the direction of human energy placed in 
the hands of reason finds no support from passion. 
The reverse of this is true. The day on which 
our reason has completely understood the incon- 
sistency of satisfying all our passions— and in 
each moment the strongest passion — the day on 
which it has conceived interest well understood, 



TI1E MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 119 

the necessity of calculating it, and the necessity of 
preferring it in each case to the satisfaction of our 
particular passions — on that day our nature, by vir- 
tue of its own laws, attaches itself passionately 
to this system of conduct, which appears to it to 
be a means of reaching its end as it attaches it- 
self passionately to everything that is useful ; it 
loves this system of conduct, it deviates from it 
with regret, and feels an aversion for everything 
which turns it from it. Thus passion supports 
the government of human power by interest well 
understood, and there is under this relation, in 
the second state, an harmonious action between 
the element of passion and the rational element. 
But this harmony is far from being complete ; 
for, the idea of our greatest good, conceived by 
reason, does not suppress the instinctive tenden- 
cies of our nature : they subsist, because they are 
imperishable; they are developed, they act, they 
demand their immediate satisfaction, as they did 
before, and they endeavor to drag the strength of 
our faculties to this immediate satisfaction, and 
they succeed very often. If interest well under- 
stood discovers sympathy in passion, it also finds 
-in it many obstacles to overcome. Human power 
is thus very far from being entirely withdrawn 
from the immediate action of the passions in the 
second state. They often come, especially in weak 



120 THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 

minds, to trouble the calculating rule of interest 
well understood. In a word, when reason has 
come, when it has risen to the idea of interest w r ell 
understood, a new. moral state, a new mode of de- 
termination is created ; but it does not exist with- 
out returning to the primitive mode. Man fluctu- 
ates between these two modes, going from one to 
the other, sometimes resisting the impulse of the 
passions and yielding obedience to interest well 
understood, and sometimes yielding to the force of 
this impulse. But a new mode of determination is 
also created in us and introduced into human life. 

This new moral state, or this new mode of deter- 
mination, is the egotistical state or mode. In fact, 
that which constitutes egotism is the knowledge we 
possess that, when acting we are acting for our 
own peculiar good. Now, this knowledge does 
not exist in the primitive state ; and for this reason 
the infant is not egotistical. In the infant, the in- 
stinctive tendencies of nature rule without control ; 
each of these tendencies aspires to its own peculiar 
end, as to its highest aim ; the infant sees these 
aims, loves them, endeavors to reach them ; but he 
sees nothing beyond. In fact, all these passions 
aspire definitively to the satisfaction of his nature ; 
but the infant is not a participant in this tendency ; 
he is not, therefore egotistical or selfish in the true 
acceptation of the word. He is as innocent as 



THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 121 

Psyche, who loves without knowing what love is. 
Reason in man is the torch of Psyche. It is reason 
alone which reveals to him the highest end of his 
passions, and, by revealing it to him, puts it as a 
reasonable motive of conduct, in the place of the 
fickle passions which before directed him : it is 
reason alone which creates egotism, or selfishness, 
in him ; it is impossible, it cannot exist in the pri- 
mitive state 

We have not as yet, gentlemen, reached that 
state which particularly and truly deserves the 
name of the moral state. This state is the result of 
a new discovery made by the reason, of a discovery 
which elevates man from the general ideas, that 
produced the egotistical or selfish state, to universal 
and absolute ideas. 

This new step, gentlemen, is not taken by the 
morality of selfishness. The selfish morality stops 
at egotism. To take this step, is to leap over the 
immense interval which separates selfish from dis- 
interested morality. This is the way, gentlemen, 
that the transition in man from the second state 
that I have just described, to the state properly 
called the moral state, takes place. 

There is, gentlemen, a vicious circle hidden in 
the mode of egotistical determination. Egotism or 
selfishness calls good the satisfaction of the ten- 
dencies of our nature ; and when we inquire why 

6 



122 TIIR MORAL FACTS OF IICTMAN NATURE. 

the satisfaction of these tendencies of our nature is 
our good, the answer is, it is so because it is the 
satisfaction of the tendencies of our nature. It is 
in vain, that in order to escape from this vicious 
circle, egotism seeks in the pleasure consequent 
upon the satisfaction of the tendencies of our 
nature, the reason of the equation which it estab- 
lishes between this satisfaction and our good ; 
reason finds no weightier evidence in the equation 
of pleasure and good, than in the equation of the 
satisfaction of our nature and good, and the reason 
of this last equation always seems to it a mystery. 
It is this mystery, gentlemen, which drives the 
reason to take another step in moral conceptions. 
Leaving the exclusive consideration of individual 
phenomena, reason conceives that what takes place 
in us, takes place in all possible creatures ; that all 
having a peculiar nature, all aspire by virtue of 
this nature to a peculiar end, w T hich is also their 
good, and that each of these different ends is an 
element of a total and final end which comprehends 
them all, of an end which is the end of the crea- 
tion, of an end which is universal order, and the 
realization of which alone merits, in the eye of 
reason, the title of good, alone fills up the idea of it, 
and alone forms with this idea a self-evident equa- 
tion that needs no proof. When the reason has 
risen to this conception, then and only then does it 



THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 123 

possess the idea of good ; before, it had it not. 
Reason had, through a confused feeling, applied 
this name to the satisfaction of our nature, but was 
unable to account for the application nor to justify 
it. By the light of this new discovery, this appli- 
cation becomes clear and legitimate. Good — true 
good — good in itself— absolute good, is the realiza- 
tion of the absolute end of the creation, is universal 
order. The end of each element of the creation — 
that is, of each being, is an element of this abso- 
lute end. Each being, then, aspires to this abso- 
lute end while aspiring to its own end ; and this 
universal aspiration is the universal life of the 
creation. The realization of the end of each being 
is then an element of the realization of the end 
of the creation — that is, of universal order. The 
good of each being is then a fragment of absolute 
good ; and it is for this reason that the good of 
each being is a good ; it is from this that this 
character comes ; and if absolute good is to be 
respected, and if it is to be held sacred by the 
reason, the good of each being, the realization of 
the end of' each being, the accomplishment of the 
destiny of each being, the development of the na- 
ture of each being, the satisfaction of the tendencies 
of each being — all things identical and which make 
but one — are equally sacred and to be respected. 
Now, gentlemen, as soon as the idea of order 



124 THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 

is conceived by our reason, there arises between 
our reason and this idea a sympathy so profound, 
so true, so immediate, that our reason prostrates 
itself before this idea, it recognizes it as sacred and 
obligatory, it adores it as its lawful sovereign, it 
honors it and submits to it as its natural and 
eternal law. To violate order, is an indignity in 
the eye of reason ; to realize order, as far as is per- 
mitted to our weakness, is good, is beautiful. A 
new mode of acting has appeared — a new rule 
truly a rule — a new law truly a law — a nu >uvo — a 
rule — a law that is lawful by itself, that obliges 
immediately, that has no need, in order to make 
itself respected and recognized, to invoke anything 
extraneous to itself, anything anterior or superior 
to itself. 

To deny that there is for us, who are reasonable 
beings, anything holy, sacred or obligatory, is to 
deny one of two things, either that human reason 
does not rise to the idea of good in itself — of uni- 
versal order, or that after conceiving this idea, our 
reason does not bend before it and feel immediately 
that it has met its true law, which it had not before 
perceived : two facts equally impossible to disown 
or to contest. 

This idea — this law — is luminous and fruitful. 
By showing us that the end of each creature is an 
element of universal order, it stamps upon the end 



THE MORAL FACT8 OF HUMAN NATURE. 125 

of each being and upon the instinctive tendencies 
by which each being aspires to its end, a character 
to be respected and held sacred, which they did 
not possess before. Up to that time we were 
determined to the satisfaction of the tendencies of 
our nature by the impulse itself of these tendencies 
or by the attraction of pleasure which follows this 
satisfaction ; reason was able to judge the satisfac- 
tion fit, useful, agreeable : it was able in this way 
to calculate the means of obtaining the satisfaction ; 
but whether it was legitimate — good in itself — 
whether it was or was not our duty to pursue it, 
our right to obtain it, our reason was wholly igno- 
rant. The right and duty of proceeding to our 
end, which is our good, appear to us only on that 
day when our end appears to us as an element 
of universal order, and our good as a fragment of 
absolute good. That day clothes them with the 
characters of legitimacy, and of absolute goodness 
which our good did not possess; but our end is not 
alone clothed with these characters ; the good, the 
end, of each being is clothed at the same time with 
the same characters. Before this, we could readily 
conceive that other beings have also tendencies to 
satisfy, and that consequently there is a good for 
them as for us ; impelled by sympathy, we could 
readily desire instinctively their good, find pleasure 
in doing them good, and consequently, cause the 



126 THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 

production of this good to enter into the calcula- 
tions of our selfishness. But our reason could not 
decide nor even conceive that it was good and law- 
ful for them to attain this good, and that, therefore, 
this good ought, to a certain extent, to be respected 
and held sacred by us. But when the idea of 
absolute good is conceived, that which was invisi- 
ble appears, and the good of others becomes sacred 
to us at the same time and for the same reason 
as our own — that is, as an equal element of one and 
the same thing, order, which alone is to be 
respected and held sacred for itself. Thus, at the 
very same time, the character is attached to the 
good of others, and to our own good the character 
which makes them obligatory. There is no longer 
any difference between the duty of accomplishing 
the one and the duty of respecting and of assisting 
to accomplish the other ; both are lost and con- 
founded in the bosom of absolute good_, which, 
being obligatory by itself, communicates to them, 
to the same degree, the legitimacy which exists 
in it. 

All duty, all right, all obligation, all morality, 
flow, then, from one and the same source, which is 
the idea of good in itself — the idea of order. If 
you suppress this idea, there is no longer anything 
sacred in itself for reason, consequently, no longer 
anything obligatory, consequently, no longer any 



THE MORAL FACTS OF IIUMAN NATURE. 127 

difference of morality between the aims that we 
can pursue, between the acts that we can do ; the 
creation is unintelligible, and all destiny is an 
enigma. If you restore this idea, everything 
becomes clear in the universe and in man ; there is 
an end for every and each thins; ; there is a sacred 
order which every reasonable creature ought to 
respect and assist in accomplishing in itself and out 
of itself; thence come duties, rights, a morality, a 
natural legislation of human conduct. Such are, 
gentlemen, the consequences that the conception of 
order or of good in itself draws after it in human 
nature. 

But this idea of order itself, although so lofty, is 
not the limit of human thought ; human thought 
makes another step, and rises to God, who has 
established this universal order, and who has given 
to each creature concurring in this order, its consti- 
tution, and consequently its end and good. Thus, 
connected with His eternal being, order leaves its 
metaphysical abstractions, and becomes the expres- 
sion of the divine thought ; from this time, too, 
morality shows its religious side. But there was 
no need of its showing this side to be obligatory, 
for, the relation existing between our reason and 
the idea of order exists independently of all re- 
ligious thought. Only when God appears as the 
substance of order, if I can so speak, as the will 



128 THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 

which has established it, as the intelligence that 
lias thought it, religious submission is united to 
moral submission, and by this also order has an 
additional claim to be respected. 

Again, in infancy and a long time before the 
developed reason has risen to the idea of order, we 
feel sympathy, a love for everything possessing the 
character of beauty, antipathy and aversion for 
everything possessing the character of ugliness. 
Now, a profound analysis proves that beauty and 
ugliness are nothing else than the expression — the 
material symbol — of order and disorder. This 
double feeling, then, can only arise from the con- 
fused conception of the idea of order ; it can only 
be the effect of that profound sympathy which 
unites whatever is most elevated in our nature with 
this grand idea. Later, when we have clearly con- 
ceived this idea, we can account perfectly for the 
instinctive feeling which makes us love the beauti- 
ful, and the powerful influence it exercises over our 
souls ; and the beautiful is then to our eyes but 
one of the faces of good. It is the same with the 
true as with the beautiful? the true is order 
thought, as the beautiful is order expressed. In 
other words, absolute truth, the complete truth that 
we conceive in God, and of which we possess only 
fragments, is only and can be only the ideal — the 
eternal laws of this order — to the realization of 



THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 129 

which all creatures gravitate fatally, and to which 
the beings who are reasonable and free are called 
to concur freely. So that this, same order, which 
so far as it is the end of the creation is good, which 
so far as it is expressed by the symbol of the 
creation, is the beautiful, translated ideally in the 
thought of God or of man, is nothing else than the 
true. Good, the beautiful, the true, are then but 
order under three different aspects, and order itself 
is nothing else than the thought, the will, the 
development, the manifestation, of God. But let 
us not lose ourselves in these lofty views, gentle- 
men, and let us return to our subject. 

"When we have conceived the idea of order and 
the obligation that is imposed on our nature of 
realizing it as far as is in our power, on that day in 
addition to the two modes of determination which 
we have already spoken of, a third arises, or at 
least becomes possible, and this mode is the moral 
mode, properly so called. In fact, not only by the 
impulse of the passions, as in the primitive state, or 
by the view of the greatest possible satisfaction of 
these same passions, as in the egotistical or selfish 
state, can we be determined to action ; but also by 
the view of order or good in itself, to which our 
reason has risen, and which has appeared to it as 
the true law of our conduct. When, then, this 
motive, acting upon us, decides us to act, a third 

6* 



130 THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 

form of determination, perfectly distinct from the 
two others, is produced in us. 

The characteristics of this new mode of determi- 
nation separate it widely from the determination 
of passion and the egotistical or selfish determina- 
tion. 

Although it has this in common with the egotis- 
tical or selfish mode, that it can only take place in 
a reasonable being (which distinguishes both from 
the mode of determination of the passions), it is 
separated from it by circumstances so considerable, 
that they cannot escape the attention of any one. 

As egotism or selfishness and passion can impel 
us to the same action, so egotism and the moral 
motive can prescribe to us precisely the same con- 
duct in a multitude of cases ; but it is exactly in 
this coincidence that the differences distinguishing 
them appear the most conspicuous. The egotistical 
or selfish motive advises, the moral motive obliges. 
The former sees only the greatest satisfaction of our 
nature, and remains personal, even when it coun- 
sels us about the good of others ; the latter sees 
only order, and remains impersonal, even when it 
prescribes to us our own good. We obey ourselves 
when we obey the former ; when we obey the 
latter, we yield obedience to something which is 
not ourselves, and which has no other claim in our 
eyes than that of being good — the characteristic of 



TIIE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 131 

a law. There is, then, a devotion of ourselves to 
something else in the one ease, while there can be 
no such devotion in the other. Now, gentlemen, 
the devotion of a being to that which is not him- 
self, but to that which appears to him good, is pre- 
cisely what is called virtue or moral good ; from 
which you see that virtue and moral good can only 
appear to us in the third state, and are phenomena 
peculiar to this third form of determination. There 
is a moral good in us, gentlemen, every time that 
we obey voluntarily and understandingly the law 
which is the rule of our conduct ; moral evil every 
time that we disobey this law knowingly and 
voluntarily. Such is the strict definition of this 
kind of good and evil, entirely distinct from abso- 
lute good and evil, which is order and disorder, 
and from that part of good and evil which we call 
the good and evil of man, and which is the 
accomplishment or non-accomplishment of his end 
or his order. 

The difference between the moral mode of deter- 
mination and the other two is also found in the 
phenomena following the determination. • Among 
these phenomena, there is one especially which is 
characteristic of the moral determination. When 
we have voluntarily fulfilled the moral law, inde- 
pendently of the special pleasure that our sensibility 
feels, we judge ourselves worthy of esteem and 



132 THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 

recompense ; in the opposite case, independently 
of pain, we judge ourselves worthy of blame and 
punishment. It is this which is called the satisfac- 
tion of having done well and the pain of having 
done badly, or remorse. 

This judgment of merit or demerit takes place 
necessarily after every action that bears a moral 
character either good or bad. It does not take place 
and it cannot take place after the two former modes 
of determination that I have described. Indeed, 
when we have acted in opposition to our interest 
well "understood, we can, if we wish, accuse our 
weakness and our want of skill ; in the opposite case 
we can praise ourselves for our prudence, our wis- 
dom and our skill. But these phenomena are entire- 
ly distinct from moral approbation and disapproba- 
tion. ]STo one ever experiences remorse for having 
been wanting to his interest well understood, as 
such ; it is only wl^eii this interest has been united to 
the idea of order, $f}d when our conduct while com- 
promising the one appear to our eyes as having vio- 
lated the other, tl^at rgmorse i§ produced in the train 
of imprudence; it is |Jie consequence of this last con- 
sideration and nqt of the first. Ypu perceive, gen- 
tlemen, that I do not condemn interest well under- 
stood ; on the pontrary, I legalize it as an element 
of order, and J make a duty of it in many cases. 
But this is a character thftt it does not possess by 



THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 133 

itself, and which absolute good must communicate 
to it. Such are the phenomena which in us follow 
a moral action, good or bad. 

The description that I have just given you would 
be incomplete, gentlemen, if I did not add two ob- 
servations which comprehend the whole. To what 
end do our primitive tendencies and the passions 
derived from them aspire ? to the end of our nature 
— to our true good. To what does our conduct 
tend when it is directed by interest well under- 
stood ? to the highest possible realization of the ten- 
dencies of our nature — that is, to the fullest possi- 
ble accomplishment of our end or good. What 
does the law of order prescribe to us, when it 
appears in us ? the respect and the greatest possible 
realization of absolute good or order. But our 
good is an element of good, of absolute order ; the 
law of order, then, makes lawful and prescribes to 
us imperatively the accomplishment of this good to 
which our nature impels us and which egotism or 
selfishness counsels. It is true that it is not in con- 
sideration of ourselves, but in consideration of order 
that it commands us ; it is true that it not only pre- 
scribes to us our own good, but also the good 
of others. But besides this, our nature loves or- 
der instinctively, inspires to the good of others 
instinctively ; and again, our egotism or selfishness 
shows us the pleasures of the beautiful and the 



134 THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 

pleasures of kindness toward others as two of the 
great elements of our happiness, and respect for the 
interests of others, and respect for order in our con- 
duct as one of the best calculations of personal 
interest. There is, therefore, no contradiction — 
there is a harmony — between the primitive tenden- 
cies of our nature, interest well understood, and the 
moral law. These three principles do not impel us 
in opposite directions, but in the same way. The 
moral motive does not come in to destroy the other 
two, but to explain and direct them. And, in fact, 
how could a man conduct himself properly, if he 
was condemned to constant combats imagined by 
philosophers — if it was necessary, in the name of the 
obligatory principle conceived by our reason to 
sacrifice continually, in order to be virtuous^ both 
the impulses of instinct which drive on our nature, 
and the counsels of prudence which induce it to 
pursue its good. No one could be virtuous,, if vir- 
tue was to be gained on such conditions. Undoubt- 
edly the aim of virtue is different from that of egot- 
ism and that of passion ; but these aims, far from 
being contradictory or opposed, are in harmony; 
and from this it follows that there is not a single 
virtue but what finds an auxiliary in passion and 
interest well understood ; and from this it also hap- 
pens that in a multitude of cases, we act through 
instinct or selfishness, precisely as if we were obey- 



THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 135 

ing the moral law. The infant does so, the majority 
of men do so, and it is by virtue of this harmony 
that societies exist. For if all the acts which are 
not done in view of duty, were from this fact alone, 
contrary to the moral law and hostile to order, not 
only would societies be unable to exist, but they 
never would have been formed. 

"We must, then, give up these false ideas and look 
at things as they are. This is the way that reason 
modifies the obedience of man to his passions and 
to his interest well understood. As the egotistical 
or selfish reason shows to our nature, beyond the 
particular ends of the passions, a more general end 
which embraces them all, which, consequently, 
ought to be preferred to them, and which, never- 
theless; can be brought to light by the blind obe- 
dience of the will to the passions ; so, beyond our 
particular good, the moral reason shows to our 
nature an absolute good, which embraces not only 
our good but all possible good — which, from this 
fact alone is to be preferred, and which, however, 
can be brought to light by the exclusive and nar- 
row seafch for our own. Thus the character of 
inferiority with which the impulse of the passions 
had been stamped by the appearance of interest 
well understood, the appearance of the moral mo- 
tive impresses upon interest well understood. But 
from the fact that the moral motive is a better mo- 



136 TEE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 

tive than egotism, it does not follow that egotism 
is destroyed in us, any more than it follows that 
because egotism is a better motive than instinct, 
instinct is abolished. The seeking after a particu- 
lar good exists then by the side of the view of abso- 
lute good, as the impulse of each passion exists by 
the side of egotism or selfishness ; and in those 
cases in which selfishness does not see its good in 
that which is demanded by the respect for absolute 
good, as in those cases in which the particular pas- 
sion is prevented from reaching its end by the 
counsels of selfishness, there is a collision between 
these motives, and although we continue to see what 
is best to be done, we are not always sufficiently 
prudent or sufficiently virtuous to carry it out. 
This is what the contests of the three motives are 
reduced to. These contests are generally the effect 
of the blindness of passion, or a mistake of selfish- 
ness ; for in reality it is usual for the highest 
interests of passion to be sacrificed to selfishness, 
and for the best interests of selfishness to be sacri- 
ficed to order. 

Hitherto I have spoken of the three moral states 
which I distinguish in man, as if they belonged to 
three entirely distinct periods of life; that is, as if 
one came first, the second afterward, and the third 
in the end. This is not exactly true, and needs 
explanation. It must first be understood that when 



THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 137 

one of these three forms- of determination appears, 
it does not abolish the one preceding, but is added 
to it, so that -when once produced, they coexist. 
And now, as to the order in which they appear, it 
is true that the passionate state precedes the other 
two in the order of time, and has exclusive sway 
during infancy, but it would be difficult to affirm a 
like succession from the egotistical to the moral state. 
Although reason appears pretty early in man, no 
one would dare to maintain that it rises immedi- 
ately to that high conception of order, which is the 
moral law; besides, all the world, knows that in 
many men, this high conception of the moral law 
never takes a definite form. We would have to 
conclude, then, that there is no morality in man up 
to a certain age ; that there is never any morality in 
the greater number of men. This cannot be the 
case, and we must distinguish carefully between a 
confused and a clear view of the moral law. A 
confused view of the moral law is contemporaneous 
with the first appearance of reason in man: it is 
one of his first conceptions; and with a majority of 
mankind, 'this conception remains confused during 
their whole life, and is never transformed into a 
clear idea. What is called the moral conscience, 
gentlemen, is nothing else than this confused idea 
of order; and from this circumstance, it happens 
that its results resemble less the results of a concep- 



188 THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 

tion of z*eason, than those of an instinct or of a 
serise. Its judgments have not at all the character 
of being derived from general principles which it 
applies to particular cases as they are presented ; 
they seem rather to result from a kind of tact, 
which in each particular case makes the man feel 
what is good and what is evil. But the obligatory 
character of good and evil has nothing to do in the 
phenomena of conscience with the confusion of the 
perception. Although perceived confusedly, the 
conscience does not the less present to us this good 
as something that we ought to do, and this evil as 
something that we ought to avoid ; and when we 
have obeyed or disobeyed, we feel as vividly appro- 
bation and remorse, as if we h.ad obeyed or dis- 
obeyed a higher or clearer conception of the moral 
law. Thus, the conscience, or the confused view 
of order, is sufficient in conduct to make men 
virtuous and wicked, criminals and heroes ; and 
yet, gentlemen, he is by far the most culpable, 
who, conceiving clearly the law and the sacred 
obligation imposed by it, violates this law, for he 
violates it with a clearer knowledge. Reasonably, 
then, does human justice make distinctions between 
the guilty, and punishes them more or less severely, 
according as it judges their intelligence more or 
less developed, and consequently, with a knowledge 
more or less clear of good and evil. 



THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 139 

These details, gentlemen, show you, that as soon 
as reason is developed in man, it introduces at the 
same time both the moral and selfish motives, and 
that thus these two forms of determination, which 
I have separated in order to describe, are almost 
contemporaneous. As I have already remarked, 
they do not destroy the passionate mode which has 
had exclusive sway in infancy; so that after the 
age of reason, the life of man is a perpetual alter- 
nation between the three moral states, a perpetual 
going from one to the other, according as passion, 
selfishness, or the moral law r gains the victory over 
our will, and presides over our determinations. 
There is no life exempt from these alternations. 
That which distinguishes men, is the nature of the 
motive which triumphs the oftenest. Some obey 
the passions habitually — these are passionate men ; 
others obey interest well understood — these are 
egotistical or selfish men ; others obey the moral 
motive — these are virtuous men. According as 
the one or the other of these three modes of deter- 
mination predominates in the habits of a man, he 
is clothed with such or such a moral character. 
There is not a single person that obeys one alone 
of these three motives exclusively and constantly ; 
no matter how strong may be the habitual pre- 
dominance of one of them, the other two always 
preside over some of our determinations. Besides, 



140 THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 

in a large number of cases, they concur and act 
together, in virtue of the harmony which really 
unites them— and perhaps there are a very few 
human actions that are derived exclusively from 
either the one or the other. Thus man is never 
either entirely virtuous, or entirely selfish, or 
entirely passionate : with that motive which 
appears to determine the conduct, is always min- 
gled, more or less, the secret impulse of the other 
two. 

Such is, gentlemen, the description which I 
washed to present to you of the principal moral 
facts of human nature. 



LECTUKE IV. 

THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE CONTINUED. 

The idea of right and the idea of duty implying 
the idea of law, and the idea of law implying the 
idea of obligation, it is evident that the question of 
the existence of duties and rights is the same thing 
as the question of the existence in man of an obli- 
gatory law, or to shorten the expression, a law, for 
the word law carries with it necessarily the idea of 
obligation. Before making the inquiry, then, as to 
what our duties and rights or the rules of our con- 
duct consist in, or what they may be, we must first 
ask ourselves these two questions : is there a law 
of obligation for man ? "and if there is such a law, 
what is it ? We ought still to examine and solve 
these two questions, even if we had not met with 
philosophers who have given a negative answer, 
and who, while seeking to solve the second, were 
divided upon the nature of this obligatory law, 
whose existence they recognized. But as certain 
philosophers have denied the existence of a law of 
obligation for man, and as, from those who, while 

141 



142 THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 

admitting the existence of this law, have attempted 
to discover it, there have been very many and 
very different answers, it is manifest that we can- 
not overlook an examination and a solution of these 
two questions. For, if the philosophers who say 
that there is no obligatory law are right, there is 
no need of our attempting to find out what our 
duties and rights are ; and we could in no manner 
determine them, if after discovering that such a 
law exists, we were in doubt as to the nature of 
this law, and did not choose between the philoso- 
phical systems that have reached different results 
upon the same point. 

All the systems that have erred in regard to the 
principles of natural right or ethics, can be divided 
into three distinct classes. Among these systems, 
some maintain that there can be no law of obliga- 
tion for man ; others maintain that in fact there is 
no such law. These two classes deny the existence 
of ethics. A third destroys the science of ethics 
by changing it ; it embraces all those, who, while 
admitting that there is an obligatory law for man, 
do not recognize the law such as it really exists, 
and mutilate it in different ways. The result of all 
these alterations is to destroy it ; for there can be 
but one obligatory law for man, and every system 
that substitutes another for it, can only lend to this 
false law the obligation which is only in the human 



THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 143 

mind attached to the true law. Thus in different 
ways, these three classes of systems equally destroy 
the law of obligation, and in that way all duty and 
all right, and therefore the whole science of duty 
and right, and consequently ethics — the whole of 

morality. 

1/ 

Such are, neither more nor less, the three classes 
of systems that we haye to examine ; in examining 
them, we will be able to solve the two questions : 
is there an obligatory law for man ? and what is 
this law ? 

Now, it cannot escape you, that these two ques- 
tions are questions of fact, and not abstract 
questions, which can be solved by reasoning. In 
fact, man is here — he decides, he acts, he is solicited 
to act by such or such motives. Among these 
motives, does he meet with one possessing the 
character of a law, or does he meet with none 
such? Such is the first question; and if among 
these motives, there is one which is obligatory, 
what is this motive, its nature, its character? 
Such is the second question ; and both are ques- 
tions of fact. 

From which you see that to solve these two 
capital questions, on which depends the whole of 
ethics, as well as to estimate the worth of the 
systems that haye denied or mutilated ethics, we 
must observe the moral facts of human nature ; 



144 THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 

tliis is the reason that I attempted to give you a 
description of those facts, if not with all their 
details, at least with their principal traits. Such 
was the object of the last lecture. Before proceed- 
ing, I must give you a short explanation of the 
expression — moral facts — by which I designated 
the facts I presented to you ; for in such matters, 
if one does not wish to be mistaken, if one wishes 
to be understood, he must explain the expressions 
used by him, and determine perfectly the meaning 
which he gives them. 

There is no morality in human nature, except on 
the condition that man is free, and subject to a law 
of obligation. If you suppress either duty, or the 
possibility of conforming to it, you annihilate all 
morality ; for the conformity of the resolutions of 
the will to the obligatory law of duty, is precisely 
that which constitutes morality. Thus, in its pro- 
per acceptation, morality signifies the conformity 
of the human resolutions to the law of duty. 
"When, in any action, this conformity exists, the 
agent is moral, and the action is moral ; when the 
conformity does not exist, the agent is not moral, 
and the action is not moral. 

This is the precise meaning of the word morality, 
and from the exact meaning of the word morality, 
is derived the exact meaning of the epithet moral. 
It is, then, only by extending the meaning, that I 



THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 145 

have been able to call all the facts presented to you 
moral. Here is the analogy which makes this 
extension legitimate. If there is any morality in 
human determinations, it can truly be in the phe- 
nomena which precede, follow and surround these 
determinations, that is to say, which concur in pro- 
ducing them. All these facts can, then, by extend- 
ing the meaning, be called moral facts of human 
nature, since it is among these facts that are to be 
met those which especially constitute morality. 

And now, gentlemen, since, after what I have 
said at the beginning, it is absolutely impossible to 
solve the two questions that I proposed — " is there 
an obligatory law for man? and what is this law?" 
since it is equally impossible to value justly any 
of the systems that have solved the first question 
negatively, or made a mistake in regard to the 
second, without referring to the moral facts of 
haman nature, that is, without knowing how the 
w T ill is really determined in man, you see that it is 
of the highest importance for your mind to under- 
stand clearly all the mechanism of our determina- 
tions, and the functions of each of the concurring 
elements. If your mind does not understand this 
mechanism, if it does not understand clearly all the 
springs, it is impossible for a convincing solution 
of the questions, and a true comprehension of the 
systems to enter into it I shall, therefore, once 

7 



146 THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 

more, but in a different way, touch upon the prin- 
cipal features of the description that I have already 
presented to you. In thinking of the effect which 
must have been produced by this rapid sketch upon 
those who have not heard all my lectures, it 
appeared to be my duty, if I wished to be under- 
stood, to dwell more fully upon all the features. 
When we once fully agree upon what really takes 
place in us in the act of our determinations, you 
w^ill see that almost all the systems, the classifica- 
tion of which I gave yon a short time ago, are 
explained with perfect clearness. These systems 
will not be obscure to you ; you will see how, in 
the facts, all have claims ; how all alter the facts in 
such or such a way ; how all finally reach erro- 
neous results, in different ways, and through 
different illusions. If all the principles of human 
nature which can concur in our moral determina- 
tions w r ere developed as soon as we exist, if some 
of them were not, as it were, postponed, there 
would be but one single moral state in the human 
soul. But as, among these elements, there are two 
that are not developed until a late period of life, it 
happens that in observing the moral state of man, 
we do not find it the same at all periods, and 
therefore we must distinguish the different situa- 
tions — the different moral states in human nature. 
In the preceding lecture, therefore, I described 



THE MORAL TACTS OF HUMAN KATUfcE. 147 

to you a first moral state, then a second, then a 
third ; in other words, three distinct modes of 
determination : the primitive mode, the egotistical 
or selfish mode, and the moral mode, properly so 
called, in which appears the law of obligation, not 
to be met with in the other two. 

Notwithstanding the diversity of these three 
states, their elements are not either very numerous 
or very difficult to seize. Four principles of human 
nature alone concur to produce them ; and pro- 
vided we separate carefully the function of each of 
these principles in the three states, we shall have a 
clear idea of the mechanism of our determinations. 

These four principles of human nature are what 
I have called the instinctive and primitive tenden- 
cies of our nature, the faculties with which our 
nature is provided, the liberty or power we have 
of employing our faculties, and finally the reason 
or power of comprehension. 

We must now see which of these principles act 
in each of the states I have described, and what 
functions they fulfill. On this point I wish to fix 
your attention again. 

Human nature having a peculiar organization 
which belongs only to it, has, from this very cir- 
cumstance, as I have already told you, a peculiar 
end, and one adapted to it. 

Now, life commences with the instinctive move- 



148 THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 

tnent which bears human nature along toward its 
end. This instinctive movement is not simple, it 
is complex ; in other words, it is decomposed into 
a certain number of instinctive movements, each 
one of Which has its particular object, and the 
whole of these particular objects compose the end 
of man, or his good. These instinctive movements 
are developed in us as soon as we exist ; for, if a 
movement should elapse between the beginning of 
our existence and the development of these move- 
ments, there would be a moment in which we 
would exist but would not live. Such is not the 
case and cannot be : man lives inevitably as soon 
as he exists, and to live is the same thing for man 
as to aspire to his end. From the very moment, 
then, that man exists, he feels awakening in him all 
the instincts placed in him — that is, all the desires 
resulting from his organization — and these desires, 
these instincts aspire blindly each to its ow T n partic- 
ular object. These are the primitive tendencies of 
our nature ; there is not a single moment in man's 
existence in which this development, commencing 
with life and constituting it, is suspended ; it exists 
even in sleep ; for the motives of human activity 
in sleep are the same as in waking ; their action is 
permanent. 

As I have already said, these primitive tenden- 
cies are the motives of our activity ; they consti- 



THE MORAL FACTS OF IIUMAN NATURE. 149 

tute the motive power in us. In fact, it is through 
them that our nature is excited to act, and our 
faculties put in motion ; for the final aim of the 
activity of our faculties is the satisfaction of those 
primitive and permanent wants, instinctive and 
blind, which show through the passions what our 
nature is and what it wishes ; why it was made and 
w^hat its end is. 

It is therefore impossible, in any of the three 
states described by me, not to meet the element of 
the primitive and instinctive tendencies. We meet 
it in all the states ; its sway, however, is in the 
first. 

Such ¥ gentlemen, is the first of the four princi- 
ples that concur in our determinations : I call it the 
moving force or impulse. 

The second element or the second principle of 
our nature which concurs in our denominations, is 
what I have called by the name of faculties. If 
the Creator had given to man an end and an impe- 
rative desire to attain it, and had not endowed 
human nature with the instruments or faculties 
necessary to satisfy this desire — to realize this end — 
there w r ould have been a contradiction in his works; 
there is, therefore, the strongest necessity that, in 
addition to the primitive tendencies of our nature 
impelling us toward our end, our nature should 
possess a certain number of faculties or instru* 



150 THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 

ments making it capable of attaining this end. 
These faculties, gentlemen, constitute the second of 
the four elements with which we are at present 
occupied. 

We must not confound the faculties which are 
the executive power in us, with the liberty which 
governs this power and has the direction of it. 
There is a period in the life of man, and perhaps 
this period lasts a considerable time when there is 
no governmental power in us, if I can call it such — 
that is, when the fact of the direction of our facul- 
ties by ourselves, which is liberty does not as yet 
exist. During the first years of infancy, we do not 
govern our faculties, and these years are succeeded 
by others, during which we govern them with diffi- 
culty. The instruments that we call such exist and 
act in us at that very time ; but they act without 
our interference, or what comes to the same thing, 
without our will impressing a direction upon them, 
and under the sole impulse of our tendencies. The 
executive force, or the faculties, is, therefore, a dif- 
ferent thing from the principle of human nature 
which I call the will, and whose function it is to 
direct them. The first of these principles exists 
without the second in the beginning of life, and 
that independence continues to be revealed in every 
period of man's existence. 

The faculties of human nature never sleep, they 



THE MORAL FACTS OF HITMAN NATURE. 151 

never cease to act. As tlie primitive tendencies of 
human nature continually impel human nature to 
act, the faculties of human nature are always in a 
certain movement and in a certain action. But it 
is not the same with the will ; not only do we not 
govern our faculties in the early years of our life, 
but we often cease to govern them at every period: 
it can happen and often does happen, in the deve- 
loped man, that there is no intermediary between 
the passionate or the impulsive part of our nature, 
and the executive part or the faculties, and that 
the former acts immediately and without interven- 
tion upon the latter. This phenomenon is produced 
in those numerous cases in which strong passions 
drag along hastily the action of the faculties, and 
in those in which our will, tired of governing, 
reposes, and suspends for a moment the guardian- 
ship which it exercises over them. The will is then 
an intermitting power, while the faculties act inces- 
santly at different degrees of energy or weakness. 

We see that it is the same with our faculties, or 
our executive power, as with the primitive tenden- 
cies of our nature ; that this power is, like them, in 
constant movement ; but that this power can be 
placed under two directions, sometimes under the 
direction of the tendencies acting immediately upon 
it and urging it to action — this is the primitive 
state, sometimes under the direction of liberty or 



152 THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 

the governmental faculty whicli appears later, and 
the action of which, even after its appearance, is not 
unceasing. Liberty presupposes reason, and comes 
only with it ; when these two principles are intro- 
duced as intermediaries between the instinctive 
movements of our nature and our faculties, then 
our situation changes completely. 

It remains for us to see now what part these last 
two principles play in the mechanism of our deter- 
minations ; for, by adding these two principles to 
the primitive tendencies and to the faculties, we 
have all the elements concurring in our determi- 
nations. 

We do not know a priori that it is given us to 
control our faculties and_ direct them ; on the con- 
trary, we are entirely ignorant of it ; and we would 
never learn it, if experience did not teach us. 
Therefore, in the early years of our life, there is as 
yet no sign of the government of our faculties by 
ourselves. Our faculties, as I have already said, 
are entirely under the impulse of the tendencies of 
our nature, which, desiring certain objects, aspiring 
to certain ends, drive our faculties in the direction 
they wish, without our intervening to impede this 
direction or to rectify it. 

Hence, it happens that as long as there is among 
our primitive tendencies one which is dominant, all 
the faculties enter into the direction willed by this 



THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 153 

dominant passion; but as soon as another and 
stronger passion arises, our faculties quit the direc- 
tion they had, to take that which this new passion 
impresses on them. 

Hence the constant change we remark in the 
determinations and conduct of infants. Nothing 
being so variable as the relative strength of our dif- 
ferent passions, and the faculties falling necessarily 
under the impulse of the strongest, there must 
result a constant and infinite change in the determi- 
nations of infants ; this change is pictured in their 
features, their movements and their ideas, and 
creates at once both their grace and character. 
And yet it is in this very early period of life that 
is revealed to man the power he has over his facul- 
ties. This is the way it happens. 

Xo matter what may be the object, toward which 
our primitive tendencies impel us, and which our 
faculties put in motion by these tendencies endea- 
vor to gain, we never do gain it without difficulty ; 
something always opposes the prompt satisfaction 
of the instinct. 

What happens then? Our faculties, finding 
themselves powerless on account of the obstacles 
they meet with, concentrate themselves spon- 
taneously, in order to overcome them — that is, 
unite all their forces, and apply them to the one 
resisting point. 

7* 



154 THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 

Here is our revelation of the power we possess 
over our faculties. When we feel, in the depths of 
our nature, that our dispersed forces are united 
and concentrated upon one point, we feel that we 
can reproduce and repeat this concentration at 
will, whenever we please. Feeling that we can 
do so, we make use of this pow r er. Then the 
governing force, or liberty, appears in us ; it is 
thus revealed to us by experience ; otherwise we 
would always have been ignorant of it. 

In the primitive state that I have described to 
you, commences, then, to appear the powder of 
human liberty. This power, however, not being as 
yet directed by the reason, whieji is not yet 
awakened, produces only temporary and variable 
effects. When passion urgently demands its satis- 
faction, and when the force which is in us finds 
some difficulty in gaining this satisfaction, it then 
concentrates itself. But when a still stronger pas- 
sion comes to call the action of our faculties into 
another direction, or when an obstacle, while resist- 
ing, renders the contest fatiguing, the bent spring 
immediately unbends, and the concentration ceases. 
In other words, the liberty, being, so to speak, only 
instinctive, and not yet having a rational motive 
upon which it can rest, is uncertain and vacillating; 
it lasts a short time ; its results are almost nothing; 
it scarcely does more than show itself ; reason must 



THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 155 

jitervene, in order that it may be developed and 
produce great results. 

So far we have three of the principles which con- 
cur in the phenomena of our determinations : they 
are the motive power or primitive tendencies of our 
nature ; the executive power or the faculties ; 
lastly, the governing power or liberty, that is, the 
po^ver possessed by us of controlling our faculties. 

The fourth principle is w T hat I call the reason or 
faculty of comprehension. 

I have already told you, gentlemen, that when 
the reason appears, it finds in us the three other 
principles already in action. From the very 
moment of man's existence, he feels certain desires, 
instincts, passions developing in him; from the 
moment of his existence, his faculties are put in 
motion, and act under the impulse of these wants : 
from the moment of his existence, they concentrate 
spontaneously every time they experience any re- 
sistance, and in this voluntary movement, it 
appears that they can be governed. Up to the 
present time, however, the faculties have only been 
governed 'by the tendencies ; they have yielded 
always like slaves to the strongest impulse : noth- 
ing has modified, nothing has limited the empire 
of the passions over them. The day in which 
reason appears, this slavery ceases ; for with the 
impulse of the passions, is mingled something 



156 THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 

which is not an impulse, but — notice the word, it 
exists in all languages — a motive. Up to that time 
we were determined to action by an impulse 
entirely blind ; the day on which reason appears, 
whether it advises us or imposes laws, man has a 
motive for acting. A new principle which comes 
to take part in our determinations, and modifies 
them considerably — a new principle, the influence-of 
which, in the whole mechanism, we must show you. 
The reason does two things : in the first place, 
observing what takes place in us, it comprehends 
that all these tendencies which are being developed, 
require to be satisfied, and generalizing the idea of 
satisfaction, it comprehends that this is our good ; 
again, it remarks that when abandoned to itself, 
our nature goes to work badly to gain the greatest 
possible satisfaction of these tendencies ; it is 
unsuccessful in the pursuit, because it obeys all the 
changes of the tendencies, and because it does not 
persevere sufficiently in the effort made by it to 
satisfy them. It is therefore necessary that reason 
should introduce a rule into the conduct of our 
faculties, by ascertaining the high end which they 
ought to attain, and the road which they ought to 
follow to reach it. This is what reason does ; on 
the one hand it rises to the idea of our interest well 
understood; on the other hand, it calculates the 
best conduct to be observed, in order to realize this 



THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 157 

interest. In view of this end which is placed before 
it, and this plan traced out for its attainment, 
liberty, or the power we have over our faculties, 
gains the control over them, withdraws them from 
the mechanical impulse of the tendencies, and 
governs them. A motive, a rule, takes the place 
of the impulse, and our conduct becomes rational 
instead of passionate, blind and instinctive. 

Such is the first result of the appearance of reason 
in the phenomena of our determinations. 

It is evident that if the reason had no other duty 
to perform in our determinations than to compre- 
hend the end of our passions, and to calculate the 
best means of accomplishing it, there would be no 
law of obligation for us. And, in fact, we do not 
feel at all obliged to satisfy the tendencies of our 
nature ; when our reason proposes to us their 
greatest satisfaction as an end, it counsels us in the 
interest of the satisfaction of our nature ; but this 
advice has no obligatory character for us ; in other 
words, interest well understood, calculated by 
reason, is nothing else than the satisfaction of the 
tendencies of our nature, and this interest well 
understood will never be clothed with the charac- 
ter of obligation for any understanding. Interest 
w r ell understood, is a different thing from the 
mechanical imoulse of the passions ; it is a motive, 
but not a law. 



158 THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 

But reason does not stop at interest well under- 
stood ; it goes further, and introduces a second 
rational element, a second motive into our deter- 
minations ; this second motive is the idea of good. 
Interest well understood, is the conception of the 
good of the individual, it is not the conception of 
good in itself. The day on which reason perceives 
that in the same way that there is a good for us, so 
there is a good for all creatures ; that thus the par- 
ticular good of each creature is nothing else than 
an element of absolute good, or universal order ; on 
that day, the idea of good thus deduced, elevated 
to the absolute, appears to our reason as obligatory. 
From that moment a new motive of acting, a new 
principle of conduct is revealed to us, and intro- 
duced into the mechanism of our determinations. 
This principle is a principle of obligation, is a law. 
If this principle did not appear, if this idea was not 
inferred in our mind by an effort of reason, the 
word morality w r ould have no meaning ; there 
would be neither rights nor duties ; it would be 
useless to seek for a science of natural right and 
ethics ; the only thing we should have to seek for, 
would be the best manner of conducting ourselves, 
in order to realize interest w r ell understood. When 
I examine the opinion which claims that all rests 
upon this, you will see that it is impossible to 
deduce any duty toward others from interest well 



TI7E MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 159 

understood ; we cannot, indeed, attribute to the 
idea of personal good what it does not contain — the 
idea of the good of others— and extend to one the 
motive that impels us to the other. 

You see, then, that four principles of our nature 
compose the whole machinery of our moral deter- 
minations. You perceive that because two of 
these principles, liberty and reason, are developed 
late, and that the development of reason itself has 
two movements, man's life has different distinct 
moral situations. 

The first of these situations contains only two ele- 
ments : the tendencies of our nature, or impulse, and 
the faculties of our nature, or the executive power. 
In this situation, impulse acts immediately upon our 
faculties, and they cannot avoid the impulse. 

Later is developed a beginning of self-control, 
and later still this control over ourselves becomes 
as strong as we wisli it ; and then, between the 
impulse of our passions and the faculties, comes a 
power which controls the latter, and which does 
not permit them to yield to the impulse of passion, 
without consent. But in order that this power, 
which is liberty, may be able not to consent always 
to yield to the impulse of passion, it must have a 
support. A fourth element must therefore enter, 
that is, a motive or a reason for acting, which is 
not an impulse. 



160 THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 

It is the reason that adds this new element, that 
introduces it into the phenomena of our determina- 
tions. But there are two motives successively 
introduced by the reason. The first is only the 
general idea, the sum of what the tendencies of our 
nature require ; it has no authority but their 
authority, and controls our tendencies only because 
it comprehends what they wish, and shows us the 
best means of satisfying them. Interest well 
understood, is the first motive w T hich gives to 
liberty, or self-control, a support against the purely 
mechanical impulses. 

The second motive introduced by reason, or the 
second support given by reason to liberty, is still 
more powerful ; it is the idea of good in itself; 
which idea of good no longer sums up the end of 
the impulses — their interest well understood — but 
an end, an interest entirely impersonal, the univer- 
sal end of the creation, which is absolute^ good, 
which is order. Mow there is but one such idea, 
one such end, one such good, that can have the 
character of obligation ; for whatever is personal, 
not being superior to the person, cannot in any 
manner oblige him. The idea of law implies some- 
thing external and superior to the person, some- 
thing universal that comprehends, and is superior 
to the particular. Such is the idea of absolute 
good or universal order to which reason rises, and 



THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 161 

which appears to it immediately as a legislative and 
obligatory motive. From this time, liberty, resting 
on this idea, has no longer only the motive of 
interest well understood, of the passions to resist 
their mechanical impulse ; it has another, more 
comprehensive and more powerful — the motive of 
the realization of good in ourselves and out of our- 
selves — the motive of the accomplishment, and the 
respect of order in the development of our nature 
and in that of others. In this idea of good is com- 
prised the idea of our own good as well as that of 
others ; and the realization of these two goods 
becomes obligatory, for the common reason that 
they are elements of order or absolute good, which 
is obligatory. Thus the good of others becomes an 
element in our determinations, and our good be- 
comes clothed with the character of impersonality, 
which it had not before. When liberty has found 
this new support, not only does it become stronger 
against the mechanical impulses, but it escapes, if 
it wishes, from every personal motive. Then is 
morality possible for man ; the condition of all 
morality, which is to act in the name of a motive 
or of an impersonal idea, in the name of a law, is 
given ; it did not exist before. 

And now, gentlemen, if I have not been very 
•unsuccessful in analyzing the complex phenomenon 
of our determinations, you must understand both 



162 THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 

the elements and the mechanism. Such is the phe- 
nomenon in its three forms. I think that I have 
drawn the whole description from the reality of the 
human consciousness ; and if it is not yet complete 
in details, I think that it is truthful in its principal 
features and in the outline. 

But, gentlemen, whether we yield to the impul- 
sive instincts of our nature, or act in virtue of the 
motive that I call interest well understood, 01 
lastly, obey a law of duty — the idea of good — 
we ahvays meet obstacles between our end and 
ourselves, which it is not given to us to surmount 
completely in this life. Hence, in all the cases pos- 
sible, there is a perpetual and fundamental conflict 
between our nature and the situation in which we 
are placed, that is, the very foundation of human 
condition in this world. 

But independently of this fundamental conflict, 
which is reproduced in all the moral situations pos- 
sible, each moral situation contains in its bosom a 
different internal contest, and one peculiar to itself. 
In the primitive state, in which there are but two 
principles in play — the tendencies of our nature 
and our faculties — there is a contest between the 
different tendencies of our nature ; for when one is 
dominant, it oppresses the others, which, in their 
turn, gain the upper hand, and suppress the first. 
A stormy and perpetual contradiction exists neces- 



THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 163 

sarily between these different tendencies, all exclu- 
sive, and of which often one can only be satisfied 
at the expense of the others. 

In the egotistical or selfish state there is not only 
this contest between our different passions, but 
there is also another between our different passions 
and the motive of interest well understood. For, 
as we conduct ourselves according to the rules of 
interest well understood, only on this condition, 
that we contain and repress the natural action 
of our different passions, we often sacrifice the 
strongest to the weakest passion, the present to the 
future, and this in virtue of our greatest interest, 
or an idea of our reason. There is, then, a con- 
test, in the selfish or egotistical state, between the 
motive and the impulse, and we camnot sacrifice 
the one to the other without regret if we sacrifice 
the motive, without pain if we sacrifice the passion. 

In the third state, or in the moral state properly 
so called, these two contests still exist ; but they 
are interwoven with a third, which arises between 
interest well understood, the expression of our per- 
sonal good, and duty, the expression of good in it- 
self. In many cases we are obliged to sacrifice 
interest well understood to good in itself, and what- 
ever side we choose, we cannot escape remorse if 
personal good gains the day, or regret if duty tri- 
umphs. At the bottom of all these triumphs there 



161 THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 

is a fundamental one, that of man against nature ; 
without the latter the others would not exist: 
it exists, however, by the very nature of things, 
and out of its fruitful bosom spring all the others. 

Thus, the land, if I may so call it, of the moral 
determinations is a field of battle in which eternal 
combats take place. These combats are life itself 
with its various trials and its great fundamental 
pain, the struggle of man against what is not him- 
self. And yet, gentlemen, at the bottom of all 
these contradictions there is a profound concord ; 
as I have already shown you the contest and the 
struggle, I must also show you the accord and har- 
mony. 

Is it not true that if we had the strength to act 
continually according to the law of our interest 
well understood, and this interest had been per- 
. fectly calculated by our reason, the satisfaction of 
our interest well understood would comprehend, 
would envelop, if I can say so, the greatest possi- 
ble satisfaction of all our tendencies — that is, of all 
our passions ? Such is the case, without doubt : 
for if we prefer the rule of interest well understood 
to the mechanical impulse of passion, it is in the 
interest of passion itself- — that is, in the interest of 
our greatest good. Thus, in yielding to the egotis- 
tical or selfish motive, far from sacrificing the pas- 
sions, we think that we are serving them ; in obey- 



THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 165 

ing it, we obey our passions — that is, the tendencies 
of our nature ; the satisfaction of the one implies 
the satisfaction of the others. There is therefore a 
harmony between our tendencies and the calcula- 
tion of our greatest interest. 

There is also a profound sympathy, a sympathy 
demonstrated by experience, between obedience to 
the law of duty and our interest well understood. 

The philosophers, who have recognized and es- 
tablished the principle of the law of duty, in order 
to conciliate men and draw to this law those over 
whom interest well understood has, great influence, 
have demonstrated by experience and by reasoning, 
that the best way of being happy is to remain, in 
all cases that can arise, faithful to the law of duty. 
Again, those who have not recognized the law of 
duty (those who deny it) have attempted to account 
for it by showing that it would be sufficient for 
men of elevated reason and great experience to cal- 
culate what would be the greatest interest of man, 
in order to prescribe to him precisely all that is 
contained in the moral law. Thus, both the parti- 
sans of interest well understood and the partisans 
of the law of duty agree in recognizing the pro- 
found and definite harmony existing between the 
commands of the one and the rules of the other. 
And, indeed, it is impossible that it should be oth- 
erwise : for what does the law of duty counsel us ? 



166 THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 

It wishes vis to fulfill our destiny ; but it wishes 
us also not to prevent others from fulfilling theirs, 
and even to aid them. But there are also passions 
in us which demand the same thing. In fact, our 
passions are not all personal ; they have not all for 
their object our particular good ; we carry about 
us also passions that are sympathetic, benevolent, 
which have for their aim the good of others. 
"When, therefore, the good of others is not pro- 
duced, when others suffer, we suffer also through 
these passions. Thus when the feeling of pity 
arises in me, if the individual exciting this pity is 
not comforted, I suffer, I am unhappy. When I 
experience a feeling of sympathy for a person — a 
lively sympathy — if this person is not happy I suf- 
fer, as if I was suffering from my own misfortune. 
There is therefore a large portion of the primi- 
tive tendencies of our nature that aspire to the 
good — that is, to the accomplishment of the destiny 
of others, as to their end. Our interest well un- 
derstood embraces, then, also, as a condition, the 
good of others. From which you see that there is 
a profound harmony between the conduct pre- 
scribed by the law of duty, or by the idea of good 
in itself, and the conduct counselled by interest 
well understood, or the idea of our good. And as 
interest well understood coincides with the satisfac- 
tion of the instinctive tendencies of our nature, it 



THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 167 

follows that these three motives imply each other 
mutually, and that actually, notwithstanding the 
struggles produced on the surface, actually, I re- 
peat, there is a profound harmony between them. 
But these three motives are not the less perfectly 
distinct because they harmonize, and to obey one is 
not the same thing as to obey another. If you 
yield to passion, you lower yourself to the rank of 
brutes, for this is precisely their mode of determi- 
nations. The nature of animals, like our own 
nature, impels them to their end ; like us, they 
possess faculties to reach this end. , But no motive 
is ever interposed between the mechanical impulse 
of their wants and the faculties with which they 
are furnished to satisfy them. When, therefore, 
man yields to passion, his determination is purely 
animal ; as long as he acts only in this way, his 
life is the life of the animal. The day on which 
man rises to interest well understood, he becomes 
a reasonable being ; he calculates his conduct, he 
is master of his faculties, he subjects them to the 
plan he has formed ; he is a man, but not yet a 
moral man ; and he only becomes a moral man on 
that day on which he forsakes the idea of his own 
peculiar good, to obey only the idea of good in it- 
self ; on that day he becomes moral, for he obeys a 
law ; on that day he rises as much above the self- 
ish or egotistical being as the egotistical being is 



168 THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 

elevated above the animal ; in a word, the pheno- 
mena of moral good and moral evil are produced, 
and with them all that makes the grandeur and 
the glory of our nature. 

This leads us to take a rapid review of the differ- 
ent kinds of good, and to establish the notions of 
them precisely ; for a settled and precise meaning 
of these notions is indispensable to the comprehen- 
sion of the succeeding lectures, 

I have already told you, gentlemen, the good for 
man, as for every possible being, is the accomplish- 
ment of his end ; it is this to which his nature con- 
demns him to aspire and approach incessantly ; it 
is this which satisfies the tendencies of his nature. 
Tims, my nature is intelligent ; to know is there- 
fore a good for me. My nature is sympathetic, the 
happiness of others is therefore a good for me. 
Let us suppose a being neither intelligent nor sym- 
pathetic ; knowledge and the happiness -of others 
are neither of them good for such a being; its 
nature does not aspire to them ; these two things 
do not make part of its end, because they are not 
demanded by its organization. We can only de- 
fine real good for any being when we understand 
all that its nature requires — that is, when we know 
its nature. 

Whenever my real good is produced in me in one 
way or another, there results a sensible good, that 



THE MORAL FACTS OF IIUMAX NATURE. 169 

is, a pleasure. It is a second kind of good perfectly 
distinct from the first, and which is produced in a 
being on two conditions : first, on the condition 
that it is sensitive ; secondly on the condition that 
some part of the real good of this being has been 
produced. For the agreeable sensation, the plea- 
sure, the sensible good is only a consequence, an 
effect, a sign of the real good. Such is the sensi- 
hle good, which is generally called hajjpiness. 

Lastly, there is a third kind of good, which is 
only produced in moral beings, as the former is 
only produced in sensitive beings ; it is moral good. 
When my reason has discovered an obligatory mo- 
tive — that is, a law — and when my will acts in con- 
formity to this law, there is moral good ; when, on 
the contrary, it violates this law, there is moral 
evil. So that moral good is nothing else than the 
conformity of the resolutions of a reasonable being 
to the law of obligation placed before him by rea- 
son. When I act in the name of my interest w r ell 
understood, there is neither moral good nor moral 
evil, unless I violate knowingly some of the com- 
mands of the moral law. 

Such are the three kinds of good and evil. You 
perceive now the marked differences separating the 
real good and evil, the sensible good and evil, the 
moral good and evil, and the peculiar characters 
of each. Human nature remains an impenetrable 
8 



170 THE MORAL FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 

enigma to him who lias not analyzed these three 
things that are so different, and you see all the false 
systems and errors produced by their confusion. 

In the three states that I have described there 
is real good and evil, and consequently sensible 
good and evil ; in the third only can there be moral 
good and evil. I will recall to your mind, in pass- 
ing, that moral good and evil have a sensible effect 
like real good and evil ; that is, we cannot obey 
the moral law without this obedience producing a 
pleasure, and we cannot disobey the moral law 
without this disobedience producing a pain in us; 
I add that, this pleasure and this pain being accom- 
panied by a judgment of the reason, which not only 
says to the agent, " you have done well or badly," 
but " you are worthy of praise or blame ;" this 
pleasure and pain, from this circumstance, are the 
profoundest that it is given to human sensibility to 
experience. 

It follows from this analysis that sensible good 
and evil could not exist without the other two, and 
it also follows that, moral good and evil could not 
exist without the real good and evil ; for if we had 
no end, w T e could have no law. Real good is then 
the condition of all good in us ; real evil is the con- 
dition of all evil. They draw after them the sensi- 
ble good and evil, if the agent is sensitive, and the 
moral good and evil if be is reasonable. 



LECTURE Y. 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 



Gentlemen : I have come, finally, to the most 
difficult part of this course of lectures. Up to the 
present time I have made known to you the ideas 
of philosophers upon the problem of morality, and 
I have subjected these ideas to the criticism of 
facts. This double task required only patience and 
ordinary penetration. By an attentive study it is 
always possible to understand philosophical sys- 
tems ; with intelligence and a truth-loving spirit 
we can always show in what way these systems 
contradict the facts of human nature and the his- 
tory of society. What I have done so far presented 
no great difficulties. The task I have now to ful- 
fill is much less easy ; I am going to submit to you 
nothing less than a system on the fundamental 
principle of morality, such a system as will stand 
the tests before which we saw the systems of phi- 
losophers fail. This system must fulfill two condi- 
tions : first, it must be founded clearly on the 

moral facts which which I have already made 

m 



172 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

known to you ; secondly, it must furnish a princi- 
ple so true, and a method so available, that in 
applying them to all the situations possible in which 
man can be placed, our duties and rights in each of 
these situations will flow from them manifestly and 
naturally. If I am deceived in the solution which 
1 shall give you, it will appear when I am obliged 
to draw strictly from this solution the duties of 
man toward himself, toward his fellow beings, 
toward God and things; but long before we subject 
it to this proof, its falsity, if it is not correct, will 
be revealed to you, prepared as you are by the 
knowledge which I have given you of the moral 
facts of our nature and by the criticism we have 
made of the systems of former philosophers mea- 
sured by these facts. None of those systems satis- 
fied you completely, and it now becomes my duty 
to present you with one which will do so. Not to 
be alarmed at such an undertaking would be more 
than temerity, if the studies which made us com- 
prehend the difficulties did not at the same time 
prepare us to surmount them. In fact, thanks to 
those studies, the question is perfectly simple ; the 
facts w T hich must solve it have been analyzed ; the 
shoals where philosophers have been wrecked are 
marked ; a multitude of mistakes into which they 
have fallen, for want of making certain distinctions, 
are hereafter impossible for us. Let us enter, then, 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 173 

courageously into the subject, gentlemen ; only let 
us not forget that the question is very complex and 
that I shall be obliged to separate the elements one 
after the other; do not judge me hastily: wait 
until my thought is complete before pronouncing ; 
this is the only kind of indulgence which I have a 
right to claim, and this I ask. 

I have already told you, gentlemen, that the pro- 
blem, the solution of which we are trying to dis- 
cover, presents itself always, when in any par- 
ticular case we have to make a moral judgment. 
Every moral judgment made implies its solution. 
In fact, you do not make a moral decision in a par- 
ticular case except on condition of judging in that 
particular case what is good and what is evil ; but 
you cannot separate the good from the evil in this 
particular case except on condition of knowing 
what good is and what evil is, and you cannot know 
what good is or what evil is, without having an- 
nexed an idea to the word good. K~ow, this idea is 
precisely what all systems of morality seek and 
what we ourselves are seeking ; this idea is pre- 
cisely the solution of the moral problem. Each 
moral concept, to make use of Kant's language, 
each judgment, each particular moral determina- 
tion, to make use of a more ordinary language, 
contains, then, the whole moral problem, and im- 
plies its solution. "Whoever could tell for what 



174 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

reason, in any particular case, lie decides that such 
conduct is good and such bad, could, at the same 
time, tell what good and evil are, that is, he would 
have an opinion, a system upon the problem now 
occupying us. Whence it follows that we can con- 
sider each moral judgment as containing all the 
elements of morality ; this is what I shall endeavor 
to show you, by analyzing one of these judgments. 

My object in this analysis is to cause you to dis- 
tinguish two distinct elements in these judgments — ■ 
one common to all moral judgments — the other 
peculiar to each moral judgment — one which is the 
form, if you permit me to use the expression of 
Kant, of every moral judgment ; the other the mat- 
ter. Take an occasion in which you feel that the 
resolution you are about to take will render you 
praiseworthy or blameworthy, in which, in other 
words, you feel that morality is concerned. Per- 
haps, in reality, there is no resolution- in which 
morality is not interested, but there are some un- 
doubtedly in which it appears to be more so than 
in others. Let us select, then, one of these occasions 
when the conscience presents the problem clearly, 
and let us discover what passes in our minds when 
we busy ourselves voluntarily or involuntarily in its 
solution. 

It is evident that if we knew that which is good 
and that which is evil in this particular case, by 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 175 

doing what is good we would be praiseworthy : in 
doing what is evil we would be deserving of blame. 
Our intellect distinguishes, then, very plainly that 
which I have called moral good and moral evil, or 
the conformity and nonconformity of the act to the 
moral rule. It is clear to our intellect, however 
little it may reflect upon it, that moral good pre- 
supposes the idea of what is good in itself, and that 
one of these goods is not the other. It is also clear 
that the first depends upon the will, while the 
second does not ; and that what is good in itself is 
anterior to the act, and, consequently, prior to the 
production of moral good and evil. It survives the 
act, that is, the existence of moral good and evil. 
If there was no act at all, that which is good in 
itself would exist none the less. Every intellect 
finds, then, in every particular moral deliberation, 
the clear or confused distinction of two kinds of 
good: first, the moral good, which consists in the 
conformity of the act to what is good, which could 
not exist if there was no act and which would not 
be possible if there was no intelligent and free 
being ; secondly, good in itself, which exists before 
the other, which would exist if there was neither 
act to realize it nor intelligent and free spirit to 
comprehend it, but without the conception, and 
• consequently without the existence of which the 
moral good would be impossible. From this dis- 



176 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

tinction results for every intelligence, in every 
moral judgment, the necessity of determining, be- 
fore everything else, what is good and what is evil 
in itself in any particular case ; which cannot be 
done unless we know first in what good consists : 
for we cannot clearly determine what good and 
evil are in any particular case except on the con- 
dition of knowing what the idea of good contains. 
Every moral determination presupposes, then, two 
things ; first, the idea of good ; second, the inquiry, 
by means of this idea, of what good is in the case 
about which we are deliberating. Thus, supposing 
that you are deliberating over the question of what 
you ought to do when something has been deposited 
with you in trust ; whether you ought to restore it, 
or whether you can keep it. It is clear that if you 
did not know in what good consists, it would be im- 
possible for you to know which of the two acts con- 
forms to good — whether the restoring of the deposit 
or the keeping it — and that thus you could make no 
decision. For this to be possible, you must have 
the idea of good, and in applying this idea, you 
must find out that which is conformable to it, either 
the restoring or the not restoring of the deposit. 

There is, then, a dialectic and casuistic inquiry in 
every moral deliberation, and this inquiry has two 
objects : first, to discover if the idea of good applies 
to the particular case ; secondly, supposing that it 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 177 

docs apply, how does the idea judge it. There is, 
besides, in every moral deliberation, a datum prior 
to this deliberation, and without which it would be 
impossible, namely: the idea itself of good. It is 
in this indispensable datum that the solution of the 
problem is necessarily implied in every particular 
moral judgment. 

Now, gentlemen, what is necessary in order that 
the idea of good, from which you proceed to deter- 
mine what is good and what is evil in each par- 
ticular case, should satisfy you? I have already 
told you, and I repeat it : there must be an abso- 
lute equation between the confused idea that the 
word good excites in your mind and the clear idea 
by which you will explain it ; there must, in trans- 
lating the word good by this clear idea, result a 
proposition so evident, that it shall leave no doubt 
in your mind ; in other words, this clear idea must 
appear to you like that already existing in you in 
a confused state and like that which you wish to 
express in pronouncing the word good. On these 
conditions you can accept a definition of good as 
solving the moral problem. By these signs you 
will recognize in your definition the true solution 
of this problem. 

Whatever your determination may be, gentle- 
men, there is one thing you already know : it is that 
the idea which the determination will give you of 



178 THEORETICAL VIEW8. 

good will be at the same time the idea of what you 
are held and obliged to do morally. There is for 
you, previously to every definition of good, an ab- 
solute equation, clear or confused, between good 
and what we ought to do. In other words, the 
idea of good draws with it the idea of obligation. 
We may not know in what good consists, we may 
define it inexactly or falsely, but what is far from 
doubtful is that to the true idea of good is impera- 
tively attached the obligation of accomplishing it. 

Thus, gentlemen, all is clear in the moral concept 
except one thing — the idea itself of good ; the 
analysis of every particular moral judgment shows 
you this plainly. You know clearly that you are 
obliged to conform vour conduct to the idea of 
good, that you will be virtuous and deserving of 
praise if you do it, culpable and meriting blame if 
you do not do it. You see only confusedly in what 
consists the good you are bound to do, and the 
realization of which in your conduct will render 
you praiseworthy ; and notwithstanding, however 
confused and erroneous this view may be, it is 
manifest that you have that without which you 
could not judge in the particular case. 

The only thing requisite, then, in the moral 
inquiry, is to make clear this confused view, to 
rectify this apperception which may be inaccurate ; 
here is the whole moral problem, and it will be 



THEORKTICAL VIEWS. 179 

solved when we have found an idea which forms 
with the idea of good, such as exists vaguely in us, 
a clear equation for our minds. Before we our- 
selves commence to search for this idea, let us 
recall once more the ideas which the different sys- 
tems we have examined have proposed. 

The instinctive system defines good to be, that 
which our nature desires at the present moment. 
To solve the problem, this system says to man 
placed in any situation : see if your nature desires 
it ; if your nature does desire it, if any of your 
instincts drive you to it, do it, for, it is your good. 
I ask if there is, for any human understanding, an 
equation between the idea of good and the impulse 
of my nature. Can you say : That, toward which 
my nature impels me, is good ; that, which my 
nature desires in each particular case, is good ? ]N"o, 
there is no proof in that equation ; because the 
instinctive system is false. 

What does the selfish system say ? The selfish 
system says : what our nature desires in each par- 
ticular case is not our good, for if we yield to all 
our desires in each particular case, we will make 
ourself very miserable, and this is not what our 
nature desires. "What it desires, is the greatest 
possible satisfaction of all its desires, and not the 
successive satisfaction of its desires. The selfish 
system says, then: do not yield to impulse, but 



180 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

find out what your nature desires in the w r hole, and 
do this in each particular case. 

You perceive that there is no other difference 
between the instinctive and selfish systems than 
that between instinct and calculation. The equa- 
tion by which the selfish system solves the moral 
problem is the same as that by which the instinc- 
tive system solves it ; the selfish system supposes 
the equation of good and of what our nature de- 
sires as a whole. JNTow r , there is not more proof in 
the one of these equations than the other, precisely 
because they are the same. The selfish system 
does not, therefore, solve the problem. 

How do the systems which I compared to the 
Scotch school — that is, the first class of rational sys- 
tems, how do they solve the problem ? As follows : 
These systems maintain that, in each particular 
case, we perceive in the act to be done a certain 
quality which is moral goodness, or the contrary 
quality which is moral badness; that in the first 
case, we have to do the act ; in the second case, we 
have to shun it ; but that this quality represented 
by the word good is so simple, so indecomposable, so 
primitive, that it is impossible to translate the idea 
by one more simple. So that to the question which 
every man proposes to himself about what he ought 
to do m each particular case, these systems answer: 
good— that is, they do not agree in making clear 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 181 

the idea of good, and they even maintain that it 
cannot be made clear. 

It follows that when we make a determination in 
a given case, we cannot justify it ; we can say 
nothing in order to justify it. In fact, the only 
reasons we can. give for having acted in a certain 
way in a particular case, is to show, first, what 
good is; secondly, how there is good in that par- 
ticular case. Now the Scotch school, and all the 
systems which belong to that school, maintain that 
the idea of good is a simple idea, indecomposable ; 
to those who ask you to justify the determination 
you have taken, the only answer is: I have taken 
it because it seemed to me good. But is it not evi- 
dent that when we have acted in a certain way, we 
have a thousand means of justifying the resolution 
that we have taken, and is it not also true that we 
deliberate sometimes in order to know where the 
good is, and where the evil is ? How could we 
deliberate if the good was so visible a quality? 
This system cannot be supported, although nothing 
can be said against the equation which it proposes : 
good is good. 

How does Kant solve the question ? 

He does not solve it directly. Kant has estab- 
lished and taught the signs by means of which you 
can recognize the existence of good in each parti- 
cular ease. See if what you wish to do appears to 



182 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

you obligatory, not only for you but for all the 
intelligent beings possible. Assuredly, gentlemen, 
this is a good way, but it is blind and does not 
solve the question. It is not thus we should con- 
duet ourselves in case we were deciding what we 
ought and what we ought not to do. It is evident 
that if things happened as Kant affirms, when we 
would justify a certain determination which we 
had taken, it would not be sufficient to say : I have 
taken it because I believed myself obliged to take it, 
because I felt that it was my duty. As there is an 
equation between good and what ought to be done, 
to translate the idea of good by the idea of w r hat 
ought to be done, is to translate the idea of good 
by the idea of good ; this is to elucidate nothing; 
it is to leave the intellect in the obscurity in which 
it was, and from which it is the object of a moral 
system to rescue it. So that the means indicated 
by Kant, good as a casuistic and practical means, 
does not solve the problem. 

How do the other systems which agree in ex- 
plaining the idea of good solve the problem? 
Some solve it by the idea of truth, others by the 
idea of order, others by the idea of w r hat is conform- 
able to our nature, etc. None of these solutions 
seemed to us either entirely true or entirely false — ■ 
that is, although none seemed to want proof, still 
none seemed to us to have attained that degree of 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 183 

clearness which the conscience demands. In other 
words, there is an appeal of the conscience against 
all these systems. You must remember, however, 
that I did not examine these systems in detail. 
What they possess of truth and falsity will become 
apparent to you when I shall have given you my 
solution which I regard as true. Such are briefly 
the results obtained by the examination of the dif- 
ferent systems. You see that a man placed in a 
moral situation — that is, obliged to determine in a 
particular case what he ought to do — that is, to 
determine what is good and what .evil in the par- 
ticular case, consequently obliged to have the idea 
of good clearly or confusedly — finds nothing in 
these different solutions which answers to what 
each of us feels that he places under the idea of 
good, to what each of us feels is concealed under 
that idea. 

Xow, gentlemen, before telling you, or rather 
before telling you again, what is the idea hidden 
under the word good, and forms with it an absolute 
equation, permit me to separate for you in every 
moral judgment two distinct elements, which I 
shall call the form and matter of judgment. I fear 
less to make use of these expressions since I have 
made you understand their meaning, while explain- 
ing Kant's doctrin 

Each particular case in which we can be called 



184 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

upon to separate the good from the evil, and conse- 
quently what we ought to do from what we ought 
to shun, carries with it also particular circum- 
stances ; without which there would be no diversity 
in the moral situation in which we seek for what 
we ought to do. It is, therefore, very clear that 
the different cases into which we carry the moral 
judgment, furnish for this judgment elements 
which are not the same, and which vary from 
one case to another. Thus in the case of a deposit 
which has been confided to me, what is peculiar 
about it is the fact of my receiving a deposit, and 
all the different circumstances which can surround 
it and give it a peculiar aspect. When I deliberate 
about this case, I do not deliberate whether or not 
I ought to assist an unfortunate person, nor upon 
any other cases which the moral deliberations can 
present. Now that which varies thus from one 
case to another is peculiar to each, and this is what 
I call the matter of the judgment. But indepen- 
dently of this fluctuating and peculiar element, 
every moral judgment contains another common 
to all, and which does not vary from one to the 
other : this element, which I call the form of the 
judgment, is the a priori element — that which is 
not furnished by experience but given by reason ; 
in a word the idea of good. There are then in 
every moral judgment two data — first, the idea of 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 185 

good or the form — secondly, the particular case to 
be estimated, or the matter. The moral judgment 
results from the bringing together of these two ele- 
ments. The empirical element or the matter "being 
given, the rational element or the form applies 
itself to it, and determines in the particular case 
that which is good and that which is evil. Then the 
judgment being given, I do or do not conform to 
it, which renders me praiseworthy or blameworthy, 
which produces the moral good or moral evil 
entirely distinct from the good in itself which I 
first perceived and determined. You see, more- 
over, that the a priori element or the form of good 
is invariable, the same for all cases, and that the 
empirical element or the matter of good varies in 
different cases. Well, gentlemen, one case alone is 
sufficient for our reason to conceive the form of 
good — that is, what the idea of good represents in 
itself. But it is a long and tedious inquiry to 
determine, in all the situations in which man can 
be placed, in what good consists. I make this 
broad distinction, because it explains the fact which 
caused the majority of the moral systems to fail ; 
because all men have the idea of good, and feel 
obliged to conform their conduct to it, and because 
they differ still infinitely in the judgments they 
pass upon what is good ; because it is this which 
makes the most savage nations think as we do, that 



186 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

there is a good and evil, and that they have rights 
and duties, and because upon the question of learn- 
ing in what consist this good, this evil, these duties 
and rights in particular cases, they are still deceived 
and commit mistakes which a less imperfect state 
of civilization escapes, and which a more advanced 
state of civilization amends almost completely. 

Not only does the distinction between the form 
and the matter of good explain the fact of the 
progressive improvements of morality at the same 
time that it explains its immutability, and its 
diversity at the same time as its universality ; but 
it also explains another important fact, which is 
reproduced continually, the difference existing be- 
tween the morality of the agent and the rectitude 
of the act. 

In fact, gentlemen, to what is moral obligation 
attached ? To the idea itself of good. From the 
moment that I have the idea of good, I feel that I 
am constrained to do it ; but in particular cases I 
may be deceived, and take for good what is evil ; 
it can happen, then, and does often happen, that I 
think I feel myself obliged to do an act bad in it- 
self : if I act in this case my intention is good, and 
my action is not. The innocence of the agent is 
separated, then, from the rectitude of the action ; 
my ■* itention has been good and I am acquitted; 
bu', he action remains none the less bad. Whence 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 187 

comes this apparent contradiction? Solely from 
the fact that it is one thing to conceive the idea of 
good and the obligation attached to it, and another 
thing to determine in. each particular case that 
which is good. 

In the solution of this last question, " In what 
does good consist in different particular cases?" 
exist the variableness and progressive improvement 
of morality. In the idea of good and in the idea 
of obligation attached to it exist its immutability 
and universality. The form of good is in every 
human intellect, and in this sense .the savage is as 
moral as we ; the shepherd as moral as the philo- 
sopher. Clear or confused, the idea of good exists 
in them with obligation attached to it. It is in the 
application of the form of good to a particular case 
that some judge better than others ; from this arises 
a conduct of a more or less perfect moral rectitude ; 
but virtue is not subject to these inequalities, and 
the agent who does what appears to him good, 
whether he is deceived or not, remains virtuous in 
the same degree. 

Now, as you already know, the idea by which I 
translate the idea of good, is the idea of the end. 
I told you that it is evident to every man, first, that 
he has an end, then that this end is his good, and 
that this end is precisely that which is contained 
for him under the name of his true good. I ask 



188 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

you, gentlemen, is it or is it not true? Do you feel 
that there is or that there is not an absolute equa- 
tion between these two things, the end of a being 
and his true good ? Is it not clear that every being 
has an end ? What is this end ? It is his good, 
his true good ; in this consists the true end of every 
intelligent and free being, and consequently his 
duty. Whoever proceeds with all his energy to- 
ward his end, for which he was created, does what 
he ousrtit to do. 

The objection which has been made to this solu- 
tion is that it is too evident ; that, consequently, it 
teaches nothing. 

That it is too evident I am delighted; that it 
teaches nothing I deny. It teaches this much, 
that it gives the method to determine in each par- 
ticular case in what good consists, and to deter- 
mine a priori, in all possible cases, which none of 
those systems have done that have up to the pre- 
sent time attempted to translate the idea of good. 
I said that the following propositions ; " I have an 
end, and this end is my good : every being has an 
end, and for every being the accomplishment of its 
end is its true good ; everything has an end 
and this end is absolute good." I said that, for 
every reasonable being, for every reason, these pro- 
positions were sufficient. If they are plain, it fol- 
lows that obligation is attached to the translation 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 189 

which they express and which they give to the 
word good ; what I ought to do is to go toward 
my end ; what every intelligent and free being 
ought to do is to proceed toward his end ; in ad- 
vancing toward it this intelligent and free being 
and myself not only do what we ought to do, 
go toward our good, but we contribute also to the 
realization of absolute good, which appears to us 
to be made up of the accomplishment of all the 
particular ends of all the beings composing the 
creation. 

This, gentlemen, is my solution of the moral 
problem. I said that not only is this solution 
manifest, but that a method results from it to de- 
termine for all beings known to us in what good 
consists, and consequently what we ought to do, 
and therefore the rule of our conduct in all possible 
cases. 

The fact, gentlemen, is well settled, that all 
beings have not the same destiny. Indeed, no one 
can be so senseless as to maintain that the bee has 
the same destiny as the lion, the lion as man, man 
as a tree, the tree as a mineral. 

And why, gentlemen, does human reason rebel 
against the idea that each being has the same des- 
tiny as every other ? Because it is clear to every 
man that each being has been organized in a parti- 
cular way, and that from this organization results 



190 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

the end established. In other words there is a 
truth as absolute as that I announced to you just 
now ; it is that each being has received a nature 
appropriate to its end, and that by virtue of this 
nature it proceeds to its end. 

From this a priori and evident truth results the 
method which I spoke to you of, of determining for 
every being known to us in what consists its true 
good. And, indeed, if it is true that each being 
has received its destiny or end from its nature, 
it follows that we can read the end of each 
being in its nature. And not only can we read it 
in its nature, but as its nature is imposed upon 
it, and as it can only act in conformity to its 
nature, we can read the destiny of each being not 
only in its nature but also in its development 
or in its life. The bee, obliged by its constitu- 
tion to advance toward its end, does so. So that 
the revelation of its end is found as^ much in 
what it does as in its nature, by virtue of which 
it acts. The destination of man is revealed as 
much in the spectacle of human life, entirely free 
as man is, as in that of his nature. Hence there 
are two means, plain, clear, demonstrative, of de- 
termining for a being (his destination being given) 
his end, his true good, and if he is free and intel- 
ligent, what he ought to do : 1, the study of his 
nature ; 2, the study of his development, of his 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 191 

life. Of these two ways one is surer than the 
other, when we are dealing with free acts ; the 
reason is this : we see only the external acts of a 
being ; we estimate the springs, the motives, by 
force of which he does the acts, and we all know 
that the same act can be done for several differ- 
ent motives. La 'Rochefoucauld has shown that 
a multitude of actions which bear the character of 
virtue can be done for personal motives: so 
that when we see actions simply, we do not know 
for what reason they have been done, and the 
quality of an action, when we are discussing the 
problem of the end of a being, is entirely in the 
motive which has determined it. Moreover, actions 
are numerous and different; the motives determin- 
ing them are simple and few. To proceed from 
actions to motives, the inquiry is difficult, perilous, 
full of errors ; while in approaching directly the 
investigation of the motive, that is the examina- 
tion of the nature of a being, we arrive immediate- 
ly at something simple, at which we could not 
arrive except circuitously and with numerous 
chances of error, by the other method. Besides, 
we are free, and often pursue ends which are not 
our true ends. I know that in the course of a life, 
above all in the development of a society where a 
multitude of individuals act simultaneously, evil 
occupies a much smaller place than is thought ; 



192 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

that really men, although free, advance toward 
good, because it is their destiny ; that it concerns 
universal order that it should be so. But those who 
stop at the view of the spectacle of what human 
beings do, meet there a source of error; thus the 
method which seeks the solution of the question in 
the study of man is truer than the method which 
starts from the spectacle of human society, or from 
the spectacle of the individual and external devel- 
opment. We can combine these tw r o methods ; w T e 
must however trust only the first completely. 

You have, then, gentlemen, through the idea 
contained in that of good, a sure w r ay of arriving at 
a determination of what the end of man is, while 
if you do not translate the idea of good as you do 
not know clearly to what it answers, no method is 
given you to ascertain this good, except a method 
a posteriori, like that of Kant, which does not give 
the idea of good and leaves it unknown. In my 
system, there exists a method to determine good. 
It is a method applied voluntarily or involuntarily 
ever since man has existed, and which constitutes 
morality. 

Gentlemen, this inquiry about our end, by the 
method which I have just given you, takes place 
in the mind of each of us continually, involuntarily 
and in spite of ourselves. It is while asking our- 
selves this question, under one form or another, 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 193 

is it proper that a being made as I am, endowed 
with faculties, feelings, and instincts, should do 
such a thing in a given case ? — it is, I repeat, while 
asking ourselves such a question, that we judge 
ourselves and regulate our conduct. All this takes 
place in us without a premeditated design. There 
is not, however, a single conscience which does not 
contain this element, without which there would be 
no possible solution. It is true that in a great 
many cases we guide ourselves by received notions; 
but the notions received have been given and pro- 
duced by the same process, and afterward conse- 
crated by the unanimous consent of civilized 
nations, they have passed into maxims of common 
sense, and it is no longer necessary to reach these 
maxims by the method which produced them, in 
order to convince persons who make use of them. 
In every conscience there is a great number of these 
received ideas of what ought to be done in ordi- 
nary cases ; but if a case comes for which these 
maxims are not given, we are obliged to apply the 
method which I have just given you. As soon as 
the conception that we are in this world for some 
purpose, for a certain end, is introduced into the 
mind, whether clearly or vaguely, then arises for 
this being the idea of good and the idea of duty. 
Up to that time, gentlemen, we obeyed the im- 
pulses of our nature. Later, reason, perceiving all 

9 



194 . THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

the errors committed by the instinctive course to 
attain our happiness, inferred that we must make 
an estimate of the satisfaction of our desires and 
propensities. But in this proposition, that we 
must do what is best adapted to satisfy our nature, 
it had discovered nothing which appeared to be the 
light — the rule of the law of obligation. Then, 
slowly or otherwise, reason conceives a new idea — 
the idea that we are in this world for some purpose ; 
that we have an end ; that being free and intelli- 
gent, we are charged with our own conduct. The 
day that this idea appears, under one form or ano- 
ther, we feel an obligation, and the form of good 
is given ; for, as has been said, good is that for 
which we have been placed in this world. It re- 
mains for us to determine the matter of good ; that 
is, to find out in what our end consists and what 
we ought to do to accomplish it in all the principal 
situations in which man is placed, and to see, in 
each particular case, how we should conduct our- 
selves. Tou perceive that the form appears before 
the matter of good : you perceive that we com- 
mence by learning what the idea of good includes, 
before knowing w r hat should be done to accom- 
plish it for the particular case, and for the different 
situations of life ; and this is the reason that the 
form of the idea of good, or the conception that we 
have an end, and that this is our true good, and 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. ' 195 

that this is what we ought to do, growing np in all 
minds, is found everywhere, in all men, whatever 
may be the degree of the development of the indi- 
vidual ; while in the question of learning how we 
ought to act to attain our true good for every parti- 
cular case, there is a variety, a diversity, a progress 
proportioned to the progress of civilization : that 
is to say, to the development of the human under- 
standing. It is a troublesome and nice inquiry to 
discern in each particular case what ought to be 
done to advance toward one's end, what is the 
course best adapted to the end of man. It is still 
more difficult to determine in advance, abstracting 
the particular good, what are the general laws of 
good for every human situation, or, in other words, 
of the accomplishment of our end, of our order. 
This is precisely the object of this course of lec- 
tures ; what I have already done, was to establish 
the idea of the form of good ; what I shall soon 
do, in describing personal morality, positive right, 
the law of nature and natural religion, will be to 
ascertain the matter of right. But long before the 
matter of good is known, the idea of obligation is 
attached to the idea of good. 

I may be or may not be deceived, but provided 
my intention is good, I am a moral being, I am 
virtuous. You see that there is in the idea of good 
a form and a matter ; you see that the form is 



1D6 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

given to all men, obscurely, confusedly perhaps ; 
that it brings with it obligation, that it is prior to 
the matter ; that by it, in its name, we can deter- 
mine the matter of good. Consequently we cannot 
determine the matter of good without having the 
idea of its form. Thus, not only does the form pre- 
cede the matter, but the matter presupposes the 
form. Thus the element a priori is anterior to the 
empirical element, and this a priori element is the 
same for all cases. 

Now, as I have exhibited to you these general 
ideas, I have only to develop them ; but first I wish 
to show you two things : first, the order in which 
the different conceptions, of which the form of the 
idea of good is entirely composed, succeed each 
other and appear in the human mind — the psycho- 
logical order ; then I shall arrange these different 
conceptions logically, in such a way as to put them 
into a system. There is this difference between the 
two orders — the psychological and logical orders — 
that in the psychological order we commence with 
the particular. In fact, it is with the particular 
that everything commences in the mind ; we then 
advance from the particular to the universal by 
successive steps ; while in the logical order we start 
from that which is presupposed by nothing and 
which everything presupposes. The logical is the 
opposite of the psychological order. I shall give 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 197 

you a description of the manner in which the moral 
revelation takes place, if I can call it such, in the 
soul of every man, and then all the conceptions 
composing the moral revelation being made clear 
with the history of their appearance, I shall place 
first that which ought to be last, and last that 
which ought to be first ; that is, I shall arrange 
these conceptions in such a way that those which 
are last shall be placed first, and that, by an imper- 
ceptible descent, we shall descend from what is 
universal to that w T hich is less universal — to the 
matter of the moral conceptions : that is, to the 
particular. To-day I shall not attempt this expla- 
nation, as it is too late. I prefer to unfold a point 
of view which belongs to all that I have just told 
you, and which deserves to be presented to you. I 
do not wish to mutilate the psychological history 
of the development of the moral revelation. I pre- 
fer to reserve it for another lecture, when I shall 
have sufficient time. 

The conception that I have an end is not the 
only one which springs up in me when moral ideas 
enter my -mind. That conception brings others, 
which are metaphysical and with which it is strictly 
connected. Thus, I conceive not only that I have 
an end, and that this end is my good, but, as I 
said a short time ago, I conceive also that every 
being has an end, and the entire creation, too. I 



198 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

conceive, besides, that the creation being com- 
posed of all the particular beings, there is not a 
single being the accomplishment of whose end does 
not concern and does not contribute to the total 
and definite end of the creation. So that this con- 
ception does not remain a particular law of the 
human individual ; it generalizes itself and becomes 
the universal law of every being, which shows us 
perfectly that this conception is not a datum of 
experience, but is one of the a priori data of rea- 
son, which springs up suddenly in our intellect, by 
means of a particular occasion, and which scarcely 
produced becomes general and applicable to all. 
Such is the great work — the reach, the character 
of this conception ; it is as universal, as absolute, 
as much a priori as the principle of causality, or 
any other a priori principle of metaphysics. 

It follows from this conception of every being 
having an end, that the method by which the end 
of a human being can be determined is applied to 
the determination of the end of every being, and 
not only to the determination of the end of every 
being, but to the determination of the end even of 
the creation. As the end ai}d good are the same 
thing, it follows that this method can not only be 
applied to the determination of the good of the 
individual, but to the determination of the good 
of every being, and to the determination of abso- 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 199 

lute good, which is nothing else than the total end 
of the entire creation. 

As it is impossible that the end of a being, or the 
end of all beings, is to be worked out for the human 
intellect by any other means than that indicated by 
this method, you see immediately the limit w T hich 
results from it for human knowledge, in regard to 
the good of other beings and good in itself. 

Indeed, gentlemen, the condition without which 
the end of a being cannot be determined, nor con- 
sequently its good, being the knowledge of the 
nature of this being, or that I have before my eyes 
the spectacle of its development, it follows that the 
beings whose natures I cannot penetrate, or the 
laws of whose development escape me, are unknown 
to me, and that their good cannot be conceived by 
me, it follows that every being into whose nature I 
can penetrate only imperfectly, whose development 
or life is known to me imperfectly, escapes me also, 
and that I can determine only in an imperfect man- 
ner in what its end consists, and consequently its 
good ; finally, it results from this clearly, that I 
have the idea of absolute good, and that I know its 
form ; but in what does this good consist ? I am 
completely ignorant of it, and I shall never know 
it in the limits of this 'life. Thus, gentlemen, I 
know, that the universe has an end ; I know that 
this end is the thought of God ; that God being 



200 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

necessary, existing by himself, there is nothing vol- 
untary in this end. I know that this end being the 
absolute good is sacred ; I prostrate myself before 
this end, but I do not know in what it consists : I 
know its form, I do not know its matter, and I can- 
not conjecture it. 

Indeed, gentlemen, is a demonstration needed for 
such an assertion ? Is it not evident that the crea- 
tion comprehends, or rather is comprehended in, 
infinite space ? Is it not clear that the specimen 
which I perceive does not allow me to draw con- 
clusions as to the whole ? Is it not evident, more- 
over, that the creation, such as it exists actually in 
the midst of infinite space, may be only one of the 
thousand creations which have succeeded one 
another, and which will succeed one another in the 
infinite bosom of time ? And even if I could suc- 
ceed in determining in what consists the end of the 
present universe, it would not follow that this is the 
end for the thought of God ; for the present crea- 
tion is, perhaps, only a link in the chain of an 
infinity of creations, leading to an infinite end 
which will never be known. Whoever, then, 
should attempt to create a system to explain his 
ideas of the end of the creation, that is, of good in 
itself, would be perfectly absurd and ridiculous. 
No one knows it and no one can know it. I know 
that this creation, as vast as it is in space, as infi- 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 201 

nite as it is in duration, I know (and I know it cer- 
tainly, absolutely) that this creation is not a mere 
fancy, is not a mere chance thing, but it has an 
end. I know that this end is absolute good. I 
know that the end of every created being is only 
an element of this end. I know, therefore, that 
this absolute end, and all these elements are to be 
held sacred by me, but this is all, here I stop. 
When I have to act, as I am ignorant of the end, I 
can act only in virtue of the elements of this end 
which are known to me and are determined. If I 
knew this end, all the elements, all the particular 
goods composing it, I could act in view of all this : 
I can only act, then, in view of those which I do 
know. Which do I know ? I know the particular 
end of the beings whose natures I can determine. 
I know my nature. Not only do I know my na- 
ture or can know it, but I am also acquainted with 
the spectacle which the development of human life 
presents in the men who surround me, in the socie- 
ties in the midst of which I live, and in those the 
development of which history gives a record. I 
possess, then, all the means possible to ascertain 
what the end of man is. If I ascertain what the 
end of man is, I ascertain also the end of each of 
the individuals constituting society. Here I have 
not only the form of the idea of good, but I have, 
besides, the matter, or I can have it, consequently 

9* 



202 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

I have an element of absolute good which I know. 
I must consider this element of absolute good when 
I act, I must respect it, contribute to its accom- 
plishment ; for I know what course to pursue, as I 
know it. Is it the same with all other beings till- 
ing the universe ? Not exactly. In fact, not being 
in the consciousness of those beings, I can know 
their end but imperfectly ; thus, the end for which 
these beings exist in the creation, the intention of 
God in placing them there, the part which they 
perform, all this is known to me very imperfectly. 
In this case my duty is but imperfectly known. 
And when beings are concerned whose nature is 
entirely unknown to me, my duty ceases entirely. 

Another consideration to which I shall return, 
and which it is well to bring forward, is this : I 
am a free and intelligent being, consequently, if I 
have an end, I can understand it ; having compre- 
hended it, I may or may not accomplish it ; I 
am, therefore, responsible for its accomplishment. 
Why ? Because I am intelligent. Therefore, my 
fellow beings, intelligent and free like myself, are 
responsible for their destiny ; their destiny is, then, 
sacred to me, because it would be unjust to prevent 
them from accomplishing their destiny. Hence 
the origin of the idea of right ; it is to be found 
nowhere else. When we deal with plants or with 
minerals, these undoubtedly exist for some pur- 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 203 

pose, but I do not know for what. Besides, they 
are not free and intelligent, they are not charged 
with their destiny, consequently, there is no injus- 
tice in violating it. All depends on that ; if it was 
necessary, if it concerned the work of God, that the 
destiny of these beings should be accomplished, He 
would have protected them and placed them out 
of the reach of man. This is the fundamental idea 
which regulates our duties toward other beings. 
I give you this idea to show you how fruitful is 
the method that I have just noticed in explaining 
the idea of good, how well it gives the principle of 
all the modifications of right, of all the parts of 
morality, and what sound deductions we can hope 
to draw from it, if we apply it correctly. 



LECTURE VI. 

THEORETICAL VIEWS CONTINUED. 

I commenced the former lecture by showing to 
you the ideas which seem to me to contain the true 
solution of the moral problem. After laying down 
the problem in its simplest form, and recalling to 
your mind the insufficiency of the numerous solu- 
tions that have been given, I submitted mine to 
you and showed that there issued from it a method 
to determine the duties of man in all cases and in 
all possible situations. 

I am going, gentlemen, to take up again these 
ideas more in detail in this lecture : I shall exhibit 
them, in the first place, in their logical or syntheti- 
cal connection : then, I shall try to delineate the 
pyschological history of their appearance in the 
human intellect. 

The moral problem finds its solution in, a certain 
number of truths evident in themselves, conceived 
by reason a priori, the immediate consequence of 
which is a plain definition of good, which definition 
gives us a precise method to determine in what 

204 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 205 

good consists for every possible being. What are 
these truths, gentlemen, and how do they produce 
the double consequence that I have just indicated? 
I shall attempt to tell you in a few words. 

The first of these truths, gentlemen, is the prin- 
ciple that every being has an end. Like the prin- 
ciple of causality, it has all the same evidence, the 
same universality, the same necessity, and our 
reason cannot conceive any more of an exception 
to the one than the other. It has, also, all its 
fecundity, for on the day that it enters into our 
intellect it gives birth to other truths impliedly 
contained in it, which throw upon the end of 
things the same light that is thrown upon our ori- 
gin by the truths emanating from the principle of 
causality. 

In fact, if it is true that every being has an end, 
it is also tiue that I have one, that you have one, 
that there is not a created being but what has one 
also ; now, in casting our eyes on the world, or 
that part of the world which we see, it is evident 
that if all beings have an end, this end is not the 
same for .all, as each of those that we can observe 
is developed in its own way and aspires to an end 
which is peculiar to it. From the moment we have 
conceived that every being has an end, we gather 
from experience the second truth, that this end 
varies in different beings, and that each being has 



20G THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

its own, which is peculiar; this second discovery 
soon leads us to a third — the relation existing be- 
tween the end of each being and its nature, the 
diversity of ends corresponding to the diversity of 
natures, and the peculiarity of the former cor- 
responding to the peculiarity of the latter. In 
fact, if each being has a peculiar end, eacli being 
must have received an organization adapted to this 
end and which qualifies it to attain the end ; there 
would be a contradiction if a certain end should be 
imposed upon a being and its nature not contain 
the means of realizing it. Experience teaches us, 
gentlemen, that this contradiction does not exist 
in the creation ; experience everywhere exhibits to 
us the nature of beings in harmony with their des- 
tination and a perfect resemblance between the 
diversity of natures and diversity of ends ; and 
this third truth, that the end of each being is con- 
formable to its nature, is clothed in our under- 
standing with the same assurances of universality 
as the other two. 

By its light, gentlemen, we behold a method to 
determine the true end of each being : for if the 
end of beings is an idea purely — invisible to the 
observer — their nature is a reality which can fall 
under our observation. And as the nature is 
always appropriate to the end, we can find in the 
first the revelation of the second. There is, then, a 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 207 

way to discover the destination of beings. This 
way is the study of their nature, and whenever the 
study of their nature is possible, the way can be 
ascertained. 

To these truths are soon added two others which 
have not less proof and are not less comprehensive 
than the first — one is that, if each being has its end, 
the creation itself, which comprehends all beings, 
has one also. This creation, it is true, is beyond 
our knowledge ; we seize only a fragment of it, and 
this fragment even we know only in a moment of 
its duration ; the work of God fills space and time, 
and what we can seize of it is only a point in one, 
a moment in the other. But if the creation was 
infinite and its duration eternal, the principle would 
apply and would persuade our reason inevitably 
that it has an end. Now, this truth cannot appear 
to us without being connected with the preceding 
truths, and by this connection producing another. 
If the creation has an end, if each being has its 
own, and if the creation is but the aggregation of 
all beings, the relation existing between the whole 
and its. parts must exist between the end of the 
whole and the end of each of the parts of the 
whole. 

The end of each being is, then, an element of the 
end of the creation ; the creation only a resultant 
of the particular ends of all the beings which peo- 



208 THKORETICAL VIEWS. 

pie and compose the universe, which, in their 

turn, are only the different means contributing to 
the accomplishment of this total and supreme end: 
a final conception not less necessary and not less 
evident than all the others, flowing, like them, 
from the absolute principle that everything has an 
end, which principle, by an inevitable relation, 
attributes the end of all possible beings to a conse- 
quence of the creation, and forms from all these 
scattered ends a harmonious whole, the concur- 
rence of which aspires to a single end, the same 
which God established when he created the uni- 
verse. 

These truths cast a strong light upon the crea- 
tion and make it appear to us under a new aspect. 
As we cannot comprehend at all the origin of 
things without the idea of cause and principle, so 
we have no comprehension of the end of things 
without the idea of end, and without the principle 
that every being, and in every being every move- 
ment, every act and every phenomenon has its end. 
By the light of the second truth, the world becomes 
one in its destination, as by the light of the first it 
becomes one in its principle. The creation appears 
to us like an immense whole, which advances 
toward a single result, and which advances by the 
movement of each of its parts toward a particular 
end — element of the total end. 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 209 

Thus, gentlemen, the whole is connected together 
in the created universe, and each being is con- 
nected with the whole and becomes an integral 
element of it. There is but one cause, but one 
end. Between this cause and this end is placed 
the creation which issues from the former and 
advances to the latter, which issues from the former 
by the simultaneous emanation or the successive 
emanations of all its parts and which proceeds 
toward the latter by the simultaneous movement 
or the successive movements of all its parts. Such 
is the aspect of the world in the light of the two 
principles, that everything has a cause and that 
everything has an end ; without these two princi- 
ples nothing but an inextricable chaos would be 
presented to us. God has given us an understand- 
ing of it, in endowing our reason with these two 
conceptions, which contain the explanation of the 
enigma, and the simplicity of the means is not less 
admirable than the grandeur of the result. 

But, gentlemen, we are far from having exhausted 
this result ; other ideas and other truths still spring 
up from -the principle that everything has its end. 
Let us follow out the analysis of these truths and 
thes% ideas. 

The first which I shall speak of is the idea of 
order and the idea of end. The idea of order, in 
fact, is only an emanation, a natural and inevitable 



210 THEORETICAL VIEW9. 

consequence of the idea of end. If the creation 
lias an end, and if this end is only the resultant of 
the particular ends of the beings composing it, the 
life of the creation is nothing else than its move- 
ment toward this supreme end, and this movement 
in turn is resolved into tlie movements of all created 
beings toward their particular ends. From the 
accomplishment of all the particular ends — an ac- 
complishment which is going on simultaneously in 
all the points of space, and successively in all the 
moments of time, by the harmonious concurrence 
of all beings, performing, each in its sphere and at 
its time, the part imposed upon it — results clearly 
the universal life or the accomplishment of the 
total end of the creation. Now, gentlemen, this 
universal and eternal movement of each thing 
toward the end which God has assigned to it, 
and of all things toward the supreme end, the sin- 
gle and definite end of the creation, this movement, 
evidently regular, since it has an end, is precisely 
what we call order. There is this difference be- 
tween the end of the creation and universal order, 
that the end is the aim, while order is the regular 
movement of everything toward this end. 

By the eternal law T s of things, we mean notMng 
but this regular movement, and we are correct in 
saying that these laws result from the nature of 
things and the relations derived from them, since 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 211 

tliis regular movement is determined in each being 
by its organization, which is fitted to the peculiar 
part to be fulfilled — to the particular end to be 
realized in the whole work. The existence of this 
order is indisputable for our reason, and the con- 
ception which our reason has of it is a necessary 
consequence of the principle that everything has 
an end. Thus, the conception of order is not less 
inevitable than the conception of the end ; only the 
conception of order presupposes the other logically, 
for it cannot be comprehended, it cannot be clear 
except when the idea of the end is produced in our 
intellect. 

And now, gentlemen, if absolute order is the 
regular movement of the creation toward its end, 
it is evident that the order for each being is the 
regular movement of this being toward its particu- 
lar end ; and as the absolute end of things results 
from the accomplishment of all the particular ends, 
so absolute and universal order results from the 
realization of all the particular orders. 

Thus moves on the world, gentlemen ; behold 
the mystery such as it is revealed to us by the sim- 
ple and fruitful principle, that all has an end. 

Up to the present time, gentlemen, we have seen 
nothing moral in all the conceptions that I have 
set forth, and yet these conceptions contain and 
produce morality. In themselves they are only 



212 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

speculative truths which reveal to our reason what 
is, without teaching it what is to be done ; but 
such is their nature that when they have appeared 
in our intellect, the idea of what is good, and, con- 
sequently what must be done, springs up neces- 
sarily. Indeed, gentlemen, it is impossible for our 
reason not to pass from the idea of an end to the 
idea of good in itself, and from the idea of order to 
that of moral good. The equation which makes 
this transition necessary is so absolute, that by sub- 
stituting the idea of good for that of the end, I 
could have explained to you all the conceptions I 
have just made known to you without taking from 
them the least degree of evidence ; you would have 
accepted them under their moral as you have 
accepted them under their speculative form ; only, 
while compelling conviction, they would have pre- 
served, under the first, the obscurity we found in 
the idea of good, an obscurity that all the systems 
criticised by us have not been a-ble to dissipate, 
which impelled us to seek in our turn for a transla- 
tion of this idea, and which the idea of an end has 
alone the power to cause to disappear entirely. 

Few words will be sufficient to place in a clear 
light the absolute equation existing between these 
two ideas, which makes one the exact translation 
of the other. 

If intelligent and free beings exist in the world, 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 213 

they would have not only an end assigned them 
and a nature adapted to this end like other beings— 
in other words, they would not be merely frag- 
ments of the creation, and their end an element of 
the absolute end of things ; the intellect and liberty 
they have received would elevate them above the 
multitude and produce in them peculiar phenomena 
not produced in other creatures. 

In fact, being intelligent, it is given them to 
comprehend the world of which they form a part ; 
it is given them to conceive that it has an end, 
that all beings have an end and that the end of 
each being is an element of the end of all. Being 
free, it is given them, moreover, to realize volun- 
tarily the end they have conceived, to cooperate in 
the accomplishment of the absolute end of things 
and to unite themselves to universal order — that is, 
to the universal movement of all beings toward an 
end. And not only can they do so in themselves, 
but if some office has been given them over other 
beings, they can act out of themselves, by respect- 
ing the accomplishment of their ends and by assist- 
ing the' accomplishment as much as is in their 
power. Kow, gentlemen, what has been given to 
these privileged beings — to these beings endowed 
with intelligence and liberty — to do, is precisely 
that which they ought to do, that which they are 
bound and obliged to do. In other words, if there 



214 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

are intelligent and free beings in the world, the law 
of their liberty is evidently to contribute to the 
realization of the universal end — to contribute to it 
in themselves and out of themselves as much as 
possible; and why is this, gentlemen? The reason is, 
that, if it is evident that every being has an end, it is 
not less evident that the good of this being is an end 
itself; that if it is clear that the creation has an end, 
it is not less clear that absolute good is this end itself. 
The reason is, in a word, that to the eyes of reason 
there is a perfect, absolute, necessary equation 
between the idea of end and the idea of good, an 
equation w T hich cannot but be conceived as soon as 
the principle of finality has appeared, and which 
transforms all the truths purely speculative issuing 
from this principle, which I have just enumerated, 
into as many practical, or as many moral, truths 
corresponding. 

If it is true the world has an end, it is true, also, 
and manifestly true, that this end is absolute good. 
If it is true that each being has a special end, it is 
true, also, that the good peculiar to this being is 
this end. If it is true that there exists between the 
end of each being and the end of all, such a cor- 
relation that the end of each being is only an ele- 
ment of the end of the whole, it is also true that 
the good of each being is only an element of abso- 
lute good, and that thus the good of each being has 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 215 

the same nature and the same value as absolute 
good itself: it is true, in a word, that these ideas 
of end and of good make but one, and are only two 
forms, two expressions for one and the same fact. 
Kow, to what is the idea of obligation attached 
inevitably ? To the idea of what is good in itself 
and absolutely ; and w T hat is good in itself and 
absolutely ? We were ignorant of it ; but at 
present we know what it is, we conceive it clearly ; 
good in itself is nothing else than the end of God 
in the creation, nothing else than the absolute end 
of things ; this end appears to us from that moment 
as sacred, and with it all the different ends which 
are elements of it, and among these ends ours 
which is one of them. The accomplishment of our 
end or of our good, with which we are charged, 
since we have been made free and intelligent, and 
the accomplishment of the end or the good of other 
beings, as much as we can contribute to it — this, 
then, is our duty, our rule, our legitimate law. 
This, gentlemen, is morality ; we sought for it, be- 
hold it found. It arises, as you see, from a certain 
number of truths a priori, which, in making their 
appearance in our understanding, illuminate the 
creation with a searching light, reveal the meaning 
of it, solve the problem and unfold its law. Expe- 
rience excites in us the manifestation of these 
truths, but it does not produce them ; they exist 



216 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

a priori, and they are, therefore, universal, abso- 
lute, necessarily conceived. It is a gift of God 
placed in us, like all the truths of our nature, and 
designed to render intelligible those things which 
observation shows us. If you suppress these truths, 
there is no longer any morality : our law vanishes 
with that of the world. The idea of this law arises 
from the conception that everything has an end, 
and that the end of all things is their good. 

And now, gentlemen, I wish you to notice one 
thing — that all this is true, that all this can be con- 
ceived without our knowing not only what the end 
of the creation is, but even what the end of any 
being is, and what ours is. Whatever the end of 
the creation may be, the creation has an end, and 
this end is absolute good; whatever may be the 
end of each being, there is not a being but what 
has one, and this end is its good: whatever may be 
the relation of the end of such being with that of 
the whole, the first of these ends is an element of 
the other, and consequently, of absolute good, 
whatever may be the end of an intelligent and free 
being, this end is its law, and to accomplish it is 
its duty : therefore, whatever may be our end, as 
we are intelligent and free, it is not only our true 
good, but our law, our rule, our duty. If we are 
surrounded by other beings, whatever these beings 
may be, and whatever may be their end, we are 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 217 

bound to respect it and to aid them in accomplish- 
ing it ; for it is, like our own, an element of abso- 
lute good — which it is the law of every free and 
intelligent being to realize as far as possible. 

Such are the sovereign and absolute decrees pro- 
mulgated by our reason independently of all em- 
pirical notions ; these decrees are prior and supe- 
rior to the questions, " in what consist the end of 
each being, our own, the end of the creation ?" and 
it must be so, since the interest we have in solving 
these questions and the idea, even, of proposing 
them, flow from them. 

Whatever solutions the questions may receive, 
the absolute truth of these decrees cannot be 
changed, it will continue entire, even if these ques- 
tions are never solved, and it is in this, gentlemen, 
that the distinction is clearly shown — the distinc- 
tion I laid down between the form of morality and 
its matter. The form of morality is wholly in the 
a priori conceptions that I have enumerated, and 
this form is morality itself, for these conceptions 
decide everything, regulate everything a priori. 
The formula of good in itself, the formula of the 
good of each being, the formula of the relation be- 
tween the good of each being and good in itself, 
the formula of the mission of each being and the 
duties of this mission for intelligent and free beings 
\ — all these formulas containing the solution of the 



218 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

moral problem are given by these conceptions, so 
that we have only to apply them to man or to any 
other existing being, to determine, by the method 
derived, the special good of this being and his 
duty, if he is intelligent and free. It is these con- 
ceptions, gentlemen, which constitute the moral 
equality of all men. The inequality of civilization 
is great among nations ; it is great in the bosom of 
each nation, between individuals ; besides, the 
most enlightened individual of the most advanced 
nation will never penetrate but a small portion of 
the mysteries of the creation ; not only will the end 
of a multitude of beings escape him, but he will 
always be ignorant of the end of the universe. If, 
then, morality depended on the knowledge of ends 
alone, it would be under a condition inaccessible 
to humanity, and which men and nations would 
approach only at very unequal and different ■ dis- 
tances ; but this knowledge concerns only the cor- 
rectness of practice, and has nothing to do with 
morality. Morality is wholly in the conceptions I 
have enumerated, which are in a state of clearness 
or obscurity in the minds of all men, and cannot 
but be there ; for otherwise it would be as impos- 
sible to act and to conduct one's self in this life, as 
it would be to pass judgment upon bodies, if the 
notion of space were wanting. 

I may be ignorant of what my end consists — I 



THEORETICAL VIEWS, 219 

may know it very imperfectly, and even in these 
limits I may know in a very obscure and confused 
manner ; it matters little ; I am a moral being 
from the fact alone that I know I have an end and 
my duty consists in accomplishing that end. It is 
true I cannot act until after determining what this 
end is: but this determination, which teaches me 
in each case what my good or duty is, does not reveal 
to me the fact that both exist for me, This I knew 
before ; and solely because I knew it before, have 
I been able to seek and find in what they consist* 
In fact the idea of seeking it and the method for its 
discovery have been suggested to me by this pre- 
vious conception, and presupposes it. To find out 
in particular cases what good is, we must know 
there is good, and to discover it we must possess 
the general character of good. Now, all this is in the 
form of morality, that is, in the a priori truths teach- 
ing me that the world has an end which is good, 
and that I have an end which is my good, and that, 
like every intelligent and free being, I am bound 
to accomplish my good. It remains for me to 
learn what is my end, and, this end determined, to 
discover in each particular case what conduct leads 
to this end — what other carries me from it. This 
double determination is the matter of morality, and 
the method to carry it into effect issues also from 
the form. For I knew a priori that if there were 



£20 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

beings, their nature would be adapted to their end> 
and that thus their end would be deduced from 
their nature ; and I knew likewise before all expe- 
rience, that actions were only good so far as they 
Were conformable to the end of the being, and that 
they must be judged by this rule. These two con- 
ceptions embrace the whole method of moral de- 
terminations* 

You perceive, gentlemen, the difference between 
the form and the matter of morality— a difference 
that can be found in every particular moral judg- 
ment : for any particular moral judgment is only 
the application of the form of morality to a matter 
or a particular case. 

These conceptions having been thus presented 
to us in their logical order and with all their con- 
sequences, it remains for us to find out how they 
appear successively in the mind, and at what dif- 
ferent degrees of comprehensiveness and clearness 
the revelation ceases in different men. In a word, 
after giving you the clear and complete result, we 
mnst tell in what manner it is produced in the 
human intellect generally, and what forms more 
and more complete, more and more precise, it puts 
on successively, and can preserve in particular in- 
tellects. 

I told yon, gentlemen, that we commence with 
the instincts, continue with the empirical reason 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 221 

and end with the reason properly so called — that is, 
we commence with instinct, continue with selfish- 
ness, and finish with morality. 

"We must not, however, consider this as a posi- 
tive thing : in fact there is rather a concomitance 
than succession between the selfish point of view 
and the moral. But logically, the selfish point of 
view is inferior, and ought therefore to precede the 
moral point of view. Our nature at the begin- 
ning, and a long time before reason comes, aspires 
instinctively to its end. This blind movement, 
which analysis separates later into special instincts, 
solicits our will, and as it is not impeded in its ac- 
tion by any force, determines it ; the satisfaction 
of the instincts follows, which is accompanied by 
pleasure. Such is the primitive determination, and 
this determination, far from being contrary to the 
end of man in its tendencies and effects, is in per- 
fect conformity to it. Indeed, instinct is nothing 
else than the cry of our organization, than the 
voice of our nature, which, from the mere fact of 
living, aspires to that for which it was made and 
advances • toward its end before comprehending 
it. When reason comes it aids, if I may say so, 
the phenomenon of the primitive and spontaneous 
development of our nature ; it sees the instincts as- 
piring to certain ends, desiring them, and the will 
and activity attaining them when they can. As it 



222 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

is a faculty of comprehension, it perceives that the 
means employed by our nature to satisfy the in- 
stincts are imperfect. In fact, the instincts being 
variable and numerous, their action on the will is 
inconstant and capricious, and there results a com- 
plete absence of regular sequence, and consequently 
much weakness in the determinations of the latter. 
Besides, the strongest instinct always obtains satis- 
faction, which is often opposed to the greatest satis- 
faction of our nature, or the whole of our instincts. 
Reason corrects this error, and corrects it to the 
advantage of the greatest satisfaction of our nature. 
Reason then substitutes the end of the instinct ; it 
does not change it, it does not explain it ; it leaves 
it just as it was. What it does change is simply 
the manner of attaining it ; it substitutes for the 
natural mode one of calculation — a true mode, infi- 
nitely preferable to the other for the interest of the 
end pursued. The end itself, that which is pursued 
by selfishness, like that to w r hich instinct aspires, is 
the greatest satisfaction of our nature, nothing else. 
My nature says, through the voice of instinct, " I 
wish to be satisfied," and the will obeys. In the 
selfish determination, reason grants that we must 
satisfy our nature, content our instincts ; but it de- 
nies that the natural means are good, and intro- 
duces another ; this is the difference. What is the 
general formula of the instinctive and selfish judg- 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 223 

ment ? That it is good to satisfy our nature : in 
other words, that good is the satisfaction of the de- 
sires of our nature. Xow, reason does not find this 
maxim to be evident ; therefore in following it we 
do not yield obedience to a truth, nor consequently 
to this maxim itself, which would have weight cnly 
if it expressed a truth, but simply to the impulses 
of the desires of our nature. That which our na- 
ture desires, both in the instinctive and selfish 
states, is the satisfaction of the desires importuning 
it — the enjoyment of the pleasures which it fore- 
sees, nothing more ; for the maxim that " the satis- 
faction of the tendencies of our nature is good," 
wanting proof, is not at all a motive to action. 

A motive of action can only be a clear definition 
of good ; for we understand that if we knew the 
true good, we would be obliged to accomplish it, 
and our rule would be found. The reason of there 
being no obligation in the selfish point of view, is 
that this point of view only rises, and can only 
rise, to a maxim having no proof — to a definition 
of good which is not a clear definition — to a defi- 
nition which is not an equation. If the satisfac- 
tion of our nature formed for our reason an evident 
equation with the vague idea of good which is in 
it, the satisfaction of our nature would become on 
that day obligatory upon us, and from that moment 
we would act reasonably, that is, by virtue of a 



224 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

conception of the reason. So long as we have not 
arrived at this clear equation, we do not act by vir- 
tue of the views of our reason, we do not act in 
view of a truth, we do not act in virtue of a motive, 
but simply by virtue of an instinct. There must 
arise in us ideas which produce a clear definition of 
good, and which then impose upon us the obliga- 
tion of doing something in the name of this evident 
definition. So long as this phenomenon does not 
appear in our mind, our conduct will always be de- 
termined by the feelings, and will not be the con- 
duct of a reasonable being. It is precisely because 
our reason, in presence of this maxim, (which is 
the sum of what can be produced by selfishness) is 
not satisfied with this maxim, that it demands the 
reason of this truth. This is the torment produced 
in us by the question — Must we do what our nature 
desires ? is it good or bad to do it ? It is this in- 
quietude which causes to spring up, so to speak, 
in our reason, the truth explaining it, and which 
gives the solution required. Evidently the first 
step by which our reason gets out of this embarrass- 
ing question, is the conception that we have an 
end. Indeed, gentlemen, in the perpetual succes- 
sion of resolutions to be taken, of determinations to 
be suppressed, of which the life of man is com- 
posed, it cannot but happen sooner or later, in one 
of these deliberations, in one of these cases, where 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 225 

I must act in one way or another, that there sud- 
denly appears to my reason the idea that certain 
of the views proposed accord with my nature, are 
conformable to my destination, while the opposite 
views are contrary to this destination, are repug- 
nant to my true nature. The day on which, on a 
particular occasion (and it is always necessarily on 
a particular occasion), that this idea comes to me, 
I am enlightened by the truth that my nature 
being organized in a certain way, there is an end 
for the organization of my nature — that is to say, 
there is an end for which this organization has 
been given, and on that day I conceive, not that 
everything has an end, but that I have one. Thus, 
gentlemen, the conception that in a particular 
case such an end is conformable to my nature, or 
its destination, or its organization, and such other 
is not, this particular conception produces, by an 
immediate abstraction, the conception that I have 
an end. If such an end is in my destination, in 
such a particular case, this can only be because I 
have a destination. Thus, gentlemen, I rise from 
the particular to the less particular — from the view 
that such an end is conformable to my destination. 
I rise to the view that I have a destination or an 
end. This, gentlemen, is necessarily the first step 
in the moral conception. 

I cannot, gentlemen, comprehend that such an 
10* 



226 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

end is conformable to my nature or to my destina- 
tion, without feeling that this end is good — without 
feeling that I am compelled to advance toward 
this end. To this idea of destination and of end, 
however special may be the case in which this ap- 
pearance takes place, is necessarily attached the 
idea of good, and the idea of obligation : for in the 
particular as in the universal, and in the universal 
as in the particular, there is an equation betw r een 
end, good, and duty. Then, gentlemen, on the very 
day, at the very moment, at which from this very 
particular application — from this yery particular 
conception arises the less particular conception that 
I have an end — on that very day to the idea that I 
have an end, is connected the idea that this end is 
my good — that this good is my duty. But this first 
step cannot be taken without the light which ex- 
ists in me being immediately extended to all 
beings, and particularly to my fellow beings, with 
w T hom I am brought into immediate contact. 
When I have conceived that 1 have an end : 
that this end is my good : that I must accomplish 
this end — it is impossible for me not to comprehend 
that my fellow beings have an end like myself, 
and that it is their duty to tend toward it con- 
stantly. 

Indeed it is only true that I have an end because 
it is true that everything has an end. There is then 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 227 

but one step from the idea that I have an end, to 
the idea that everything has an end. It is im- 
possible for me to dwell any length of time upon the 
idea that I have an end, without the universal truth 
that everything has an end appearing to me. In 
what way do we rise to this universal truth ? From 
the fact that we have an end we infer by virtue of 
the similitude and equality existing between the 
nature of our fellow beings and our own, that our 
fellow beings have also an end, and that these two 
ends are alike ; and, if we reflect at all, we pass 
immediately to all other beings contained in the 
creation, and which are in our neighborhood, to 
animals, plants — to all things ; we pass immediate- 
ly, I repeat, to all other beings, and we feel that 
for them, as for ourselves, the truth that everything 
has an end is realized, so that immediately the uni- 
versality of this truth — its application to all possi- 
ble beings — enters into our minds. But a differ- 
ence strikes us, and cannot but strike us ; it is, that 
if our end, which is our good, imposes upon us the 
duty of advancing toward it, this depends upon a 
cause, upon a circumstance — namely, that we com- 
prehend and that we are free : that is, capable of 
realizing or not realizing it. iSTow, in casting our 
eyes around us, in the narrow circle of our know- 
ledge, we fall in with beings who, like us, are intel- 
ligent and free, and others in which these peculiar- 



228 THEORETICAL VIEWS, 

ities evidently do not exist. This difference, gen- 
tlemen, cannot but strike us. 

If it strikes us, it cannot but produce certain 
consequences in our intellect. From the fact that 
I am free and intelligent, it follows clearly that I 
have a special mission, under my own responsibili- 
ty, of accomplishing my end ; it is clear that I am 
not a spring to which a fatal movement has been 
given, and which is not called to participate in the 
accomplishment of its end. I am a being created 
free, so that I may or may not proceed toward my 
end as I may wish. Consequently, I am a being 
charged w r ith the duty and the right of proceeding 
tow T ard my end. If this is true in regard to my- 
self, it is also true in regard to my fellow beings ; 
for the marks of intelligence and of liberty are too 
manifest in them for me to be deceived in regard 
to these two truths. 

But if there are beings who have neither intelli- 
gence nor liberty, I cannot conceive in them the 
duty of accomplishing their end ; for it is accom- 
plished without their interference, since they are 
not organized in such a way as to interfere in the 
accomplishment of their destiny. I am therefore 
struck* by a remarkable difference existing among 
the beings surrounding me in the creation. I find 
some of them subject to a duty, others not ; the 
first are persons, the latter things. If things ac- 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 229 

complish their end, it is God who accomplishes it 
in them. If my fellow beings accomplish their 
end, it is because they will it and in accomplishing 
it they fulfill a duty. If they fulfill a duty in ac- 
complishing their end, if they are enjoined to 
accomplish it under their own responsibility, like 
myself, it would be unjust on my part to oppose 
their liberty, and on their part to oppose the accom- 
plishment of my destiny ; from this arises the idea 
that they have the right to accomplish their end, 
and the idea that I have the right to accomplish 
mine. From this comes the idea that I am in duty 
bound to respect their vocation, and that they must 
respect mine — from this, in a word, come the ideas 
of right, of justice, of injustice. There are a great 
many philosophers who have confounded the idea 
of justice and injustice with good. The idea of jus- 
tice and injustice has no place except in the rela- 
tions existing between free beings ; it is a duty of 
relation, which would disappear if the relation be- 
tween free and intelligent beings disappeared. In 
this case good and duty would still exist ; but there 
would be no longer right, justice and injustice. 

The Scotch, who speak of the just and the un- 
just instead of the good and bad, deal with a par- 
ticular branch of morality, and not with the whole 
of it ; so that they are in a state of complete con- 
fusion between the two ideas — the idea of the 



230 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

unjust and the just, and the idea of good and 
evil. 

This is the second step by which we rise from 
the idea that we have an end to the idea that all 
beings have an end, and to the distinction given 
us by experience, between the beings charged 
with the accomplishment of their end and those 
which are not so charged. 

A third step now cannot but be taken, whether 
clearly or confusedly matters but little. It is, that 
if all beings have an end, it is impossible for this 
grand whole (which is the creation, the limits 
and duration of which we are ignorant) not to have 
one also. The idea that each thing has an end 
leads us inevitably to the idea that the whole has 
an end. The same principle and the same truth 
give the two results, or rather this does not make 
two truths — two results — it makes but one. 

But, gentlemen, the idea that the whole has an 
end is inseparable from the idea that this end is a 
resultant or ought to be a resultant of all the parti- 
cular ends ; the whole, like the creation, is a result- 
ant of all the particular beings. From this, gentle- 
men, comes the idea of good, or of the total end of 
things. Do not think, gentlemen, that there is an 
immediate equation between the total good, or the 
sum of all the goods composing the end of the 
whole, and the idea of absolute good, or the idea of 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 231 

good in itself. No. gentlemen, there is a selection 
to be made in order to pass from the idea of the 
total good, which is the sum or resultant of all the 
goods, to the idea of good in itself; or the idea of 
absolute good. 

The step is taken through the consideration that, 
beyond the total good there is no good ; because 
beyond the end of the whole there is no other end. 
So that the end of the whole corresponds to the 
cause of the whole : that is, to God, who is the 
Being existing through no other being — existing by 
himself and existing necessarily. Now, gentlemen, 
the end of a necessary being is necessary like that 
being ; and as a necessary being (and there is only 
one) is the absolute being through whom all things 
are, it follows that the end of this being, or the end 
established by this being for its manifestation, that 
is, for the creation, is an absolute end, and therefore 
an absolute good, and consequently good in itself. 
Whence it follows that all forming part of it, 
all that contributes in the creation to this definite, 
absolute and necessary end, to this definite, abso- 
lute and necessary good, makes part of it conse- 
quently, and is absolute and necessary in itself. 
Our reason, an emanation of the divine reason, 
recognizes the laws common to all reasons, and 
recognizes its source and its full development in the 
reason of God. Universal order, by which the ere- 



232 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

ation of God proceeds to the absolute and definite 
end of things, this universal order is nothing else 
than the whole of the absolute laws of the absolute 
reason of God, and consequently of every indivi- 
dual reason ; which causes our reason, without 
going through all these reasonings and all this me- 
taphysics, immediately, as soon as the idea of uni- 
versal order is conceived, as soon as this idea is 
assimilated w r ith the idea of God, and even before, 
to prostrate itself before this idea, to recognize it as 
obligatory and sacred, It follows, however, that 
its true law, that its mission in accomplishing its 
own end and the end of other beings, is nothing 
else than the cooperation and connection with uni- 
versal order in itself; so that by this progress up- 
ward the individual being is elevated from that 
which is the most particular in the moral concep- 
tions to that which these moral conceptions consider 
the most universal ; that is, is elevated from the 
most limited of the particular ends to the idea of 
absolute good, a consequence of universal order, 
which is nothing else than the expression of God's 
thought, or the expression of reason in itself. This 
is the way, but it is not given to all human crea- 
tures or to all human intellects to pass over it. 
Far from it, the largest part make the first step 
only ; but in this first step is contained impliedly 
all the rest ; and this is the reason that the view 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 233 

alone of a certain particular end being conforma- 
ble to my destination, causes me to feel constrained 
to advance toward this particular end. I feel 
obliged because I consider it as good. You 
must not think, gentlemen, that the feeling of ob- 
ligation is derived from what is particular in the 
conception produced ; it is derived not from what 
is particular in the conception produced, that is, 
from the matter of the conception, but from what 
there is absolute in this conception — that is, from 
its form. Notice, gentlemen, that if" in a particu- 
lar circumstance a certain particular end seems to 
us conformable to our end, and consequently sug- 
gests to us the idea that we are obliged to advance 
toward this particular good, this comes from the 
fact that the idea of the end is equal to that of 
good, and that to the idea of good is connected 
the idea of obligation. Now, why is the idea of 
obligation attached to the idea of good ? Because 
good in the particular is nothing else than the 
element or an element of good in itself, with which 
is evidently, clearly, connected the idea of obliga- 
tion for the reason. What is sacred in my good 
is not so because it is my good, but because it 
makes a part of good ; and the fact that it is a part 
of good- is not because it is equal to my end, but 
because my end is a part of the absolute end of 
things. Therefore, in every particular end, there 



234 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

exists the absolute end of all things ; for every 
particular end is an element of this end. In every 
particular good, therefore, there is absolute good ; 
for every particular good is an element of abso- 
lute good ; to the idea of each end is attached, 
then, the idea of obligation, because it is attached 
to the idea of the absolute end, and the whole idea 
of the end is attached to that of good. As the 
whole idea of the end is contained in every judg- 
ment declaring that a certain thing is good, the 
obligation appears to me equally strong in the par- 
ticular conception, that a certain end is conforma- 
ble to my end, and in this other more general con- 
ception, that I have an end, and in this other uni- 
versal conception, that each and everything has an 
end. Thus, the particular contains by implication 
the universal ; and it is for this reason that it has 
upon us all the effect of the universal. An analogy 
will assist you in comprehending that which is me- 
taphysical in what I have just told you. 

A phenomenon takes place, a stone falls. You 
believe immediately that it has a cause, although 
you do not perceive the universal principle that 
every fact has a cause. And yet it is true that the 
particular fact has a cause only because it is true 
that every fact has a cause. Thus, the whole truth 
contained in the universal principle is implied in 
the particular application ; and it is this truth 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 235 

which makes it impossible for you to doubt, without 
even conceiving the universal principle, that the fall- 
ing stone has a cause ; you are sure of it, although 
you do not conceive the universal principle. Why ? 
Because, if it is true that everything has a cause, 
it is true that the particular fact has a cause also. 
All the evidence leads us to believe that the fact 
has a cause. Each particular moral fact has all the 
force of the absclute. And in the psychological 
order we ascend (a thing quite remarkable) from 
the particular application to universal judgments 
by degrees which are not very numerous, but which 
we can ascertain and distinguish. It is the same 
with all the a priori conceptions of reason. They 
are always revealed in a particular application, to 
which they lend their force, and then what there is 
universal in this particular application becomes 
separated for certain minds, but not for others. 

I do not pretend to say that all these conceptions, 
which form the basis of morality, which explain it, 
which make it clear, appear in all minds ; far from 
it Experience proves that it does not so appear ; 
but that- which does appear in all minds is the 
particular application of these conceptions ; which 
imply in all minds something felt by every mind : 
a confused idea, a confused feeling of order and of 
the respect which every reasonable creature should 
have for order. The proper and true name of moral 



236 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

good and moral evil, is order and disorder. When 
I act badly, I feel myself at war with order. The 
most obscure and least developed conscience has 
this feeling as well as the most enlightened. "When 
I act badly morally, I feel myself in hostility to 
order ; when I do well, I feel that 1 am in harmony 
w r ith order — that is, in harmony with the absolute 
and common law of the creation. I am in the 
ways of God as the Scriptures say ; for the ways 
of God are his designs ; they are the laws which 
govern the universe and lead it to its *end. These 
are the ways of God. Whenever I am in the way 
of accomplishing my destiny, or am aiding in the 
accomplishment of the destiny of others, I am in 
the ways of God ; for I am contributing as much as 
possible to the accomplishment of his law and his 
designs. Order is, therefore, perceived by every 
moral creature ; it is through this idea that every 
creature is moral. Without this idea he is not 
moral. This idea presents itself under one form or 
another ; it is sometimes obscure, sometimes clear : 
but the idea exists for the whole world ; it envelops 
the principle which I, as metaphysician and philo- 
sopher, have just unfolded. The conception of such 
principles does not impose a plainer duty than is 
imposed upon every creature by the confused per- 
ception of order. The difference between a philo- 
sopher and an ordinary man is that the philo- 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 237 

eoplier accounts for that which obliges, while the 
ordinary man does not account to himself for it ; 
the obligation, however, remains. An ordinary 
man has a vague and indefinite idea of it. Ques- 
tion him in regard to the fundamental ideas of mo- 
rality, he will not be able to answer you, or will 
answer you briefly* Question the philosopher : he 
will either answer by a false system, because he 
has not well separated that which exists in the con- 
fused conscience of all men : or he may answer you 
as I have done, by the exposition of the true 
moral conceptions. In one as well as the other 
you will find the ideas that we ' have a destina- 
tion ; that certain things are in conformity with 
this destination, and certain others opposed ; that 
we are in accordance with order when we do the 
former, with disorder when we do the latter; that 
other men- have also their end to accomplish ; that 
they are responsible for it ; that I ought to respect 
it; that it would be unworthy of me, not only to 
prevent them from being in accordance with order, 
but even not to assist them in being so when they 
have need of my assistance. These thoughts are 
common to all men. 

Philosophy, as I have said many times, being 
occupied only with questions profoundly interesting 
to humanity, which every man asks himself a thou- 
sand times in the course of his life, under one form 



238 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

or another, only enlightens that which is obscure 
in the consciousness of all, and it is only right in its 
systems, in its conclusions, when it is approved by 
the consciousness of all — that is, when the con- 
science of all is recognized in the clear description 
which it gives. 

This is all that I intended to say to you in to- 
day's lecture. I am far from having exhausted all 
that I ought to explain to you in order to lay the 
foundation and the different parts of a system of 
morality which I hope to build up in time. This is, 
in some sort, but the peristyle of the system which 
I wish to establish in all its parts. I shall attempt 
in the next lecture to show you how, this point of 
departure established, we must proceed in order to 
arrive at a determination of what the true end of 
man in this life consists. 

Observe that up to this point I am in the form, 1 
have not yet approached the* matter. It is true 
that the end of man is his good ; that it is an ele- 
ment of absolute order ; that he must accomplish it, 
and nothing else. But what is this end of our 
ilature ? It is absolutely indispensable to establish 
this end as far as a certain point in what it pos- 
sesses of the most general, before entering into the 
determination of what it is for each particular 
case. 

Therefore, in the next lecture, although I shall 



THEORETICAL TIEW8. 239 

certainly omit many points which deserve to be 
developed and made clear, I shall take up the 
matter of the moral idea ; that is, I shall recall to 
your mind in what the end of man generally con- 
sists in this life, a point I treated of fully when I 
gave you a course of lectures on general morality. 
The object of a course of lectures on general 
morality is to determine the forms of morality, and 
in general what its matter is, or to demonstrate, in 
other words, that man has an end, and to ascertain 
in general what this end is. Eemember one thing 
that I explained in a former course of lectures — 
that the end of man results from his nature, and 
that from his nature, placed in the singular and 
exceptional circumstances of the present life, results 
his end in this life, which is altogether different 
from his absolute end. As morality is for this life 
only, we must first determine in general what the 
absolute end of man is, such as results from his 
nature ; secondly, what the special end of man in 
this life is, for he is prevented from reaching his 
absolute end by the organization of this world. 
Whence- it follows that he is not called into this 
life for the realization of this end, but only for the 
realization of the portion of this end permitted by 
this life. From this thing result very important 
and very serious consequences for ethics and all 
practical morality. I shall describe briefly in the 



240 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

next lecture all that which man has in himself, all 
that which the circumstances of this life place in 
him and which does not depend upon him, and the 
end of man, such as it results from his nature and 
from what is added to it by the world. If I am 
not successful in embracing so vast a subject in all 
its extent, I w r ill continue it in the lecture fol- 
lowing. 



LECTURE VII. 

THEORETICAL VIEWS CONTINUED. 

I come, gentlemen, directly to the subject of my 
lecture. In order to search for what the end of 
man consists in, or the end of any being whatso- 
ever, we must previously have conceived that every 
being has an end, and that therefore man has an 
end. There are, therefore, as I have already told 
you, in the determination of the idea, of good or the 
end of man, two elements, one of which presupposes 
the other. The determination of what our end 
consists in, is one of these elements ; the conception 
that man has an end is the other, and the first of 
these elements presupposes the other. One of 
these two elements, the determination of what our 
end consists in, is empirical, the other is not ; the 
latter is -an a priori conception of reason, a con- 
ception which no kind of experience can give. 
The mind proceeds from the conception that we 
have an end to the investigation a posteriori of this 
end. I said that the investigation a posteriori of 
our end presupposes the idea that we have an end ; 

11 ^ 



242 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

for, to seek for anything, we must have the idea of 
it. Never, during life, would any one, moralist or 
not, think of seeking for the end of man without 
the a priori conception that teaches us that man 
has an end. Therefore, all is not empirical in the 
determination of our good. In fact, when we are 
seeking for what is our good, we are seeking, it is 
true, for what is the good of a particular being, 
and there is therefore a contingent and particular 
element in this inquiry ; but the idea itself of good 
is not empirical, for it is nothing else than the idea 
of the end of a being. The idea of the end of a 
being is itself contained in the a priori conception 
that every being has an end, which is not and can- 
not be given by experience. 

The determination of the good of a being pre- 
supposes again the idea that this being has an end. 
The method by which this determination takes 
place, and can only take place, is derived from 
the idea of an end, and from the idea, likewise 
a priori, of the relation existing between the 
end of a being and its nature. Thus the idea 
of an end, which is the same thing as the idea 
of good for our reason, is an a priori idea given 
us in the conception of an absolute truth also 
a priori — namely, that every being has an end. 
This idea being given, the determination of the end 
of a given being is possible, although this deter- 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 243 

mination is a posteriori. We have the idea of 
such an inquiry ; we have, moreover, the method 
by which such an investigation can be accom- 
plished ; and this idea — this method — without 
which the investigation could not be accomplished, 
presupposes the a priori conception. 

Gentlemen, to this first conception, that every- 
thing has an end, which is a priori, are added two 
others : the first is, that the end of a being is the 
good of this being, seeing that for our reason there 
is an absolute equation between the idea of the end 
and the idea of the good of the being. This is the 
first of the two conceptions which are added to the 
conception that every being has an end ; the second 
is that which a being ought to do to reach its end. 
In other words, between the idea of the end and 
the idea of the good of a being is the third idea — 
namely, what a being ought to do is to accomplish 
its end, to accomplish that which is good for it. 
These three ideas are intimately connected, and it 
is by the last of these three ideas that the simple 
conceptions of our mind exercise and can exercise 
an influence over our will. 

Undoubtedly, if we stop at this conception that 
every being has an end, and that we have an end, 
and to this conception is not added the idea that 
we must proceed toward that end, that it is exactly 
in this that the rule of our conduct ought to con- 



244 THEORETICAL VIEV5 

Bist, the first conception would h.^e no influence 
whatever upon our will, not any more than the 
axiom two and two make four* The conception that 
everything has an end expresses merely a universal 
fact ; but there follows nothing for the will, nothing 
for practice. What renders this truth practical is 
the fact that to the idea that every being has an 
end is. immediately added the idea that this end is 
precisely what the whole conduct of this being 
should tend toward; in other words, that the inves- 
tigation and pursuit of this end is the law itself of 
the being. From that moment and by this second 
conception, this truth, which was purely speculati v r e, 
and which had no influence on our conduct, becomes 
a practical truth. The idea of obligation is the 
idea of something acting upon our will. This is so 
evident that we would fall into a war about words 
merely if we should attempt to develop and explain 
thtfe truth. It is so simple that it cannot bear 
explanation. Whoever speaks of obligation means 
something which acts upon the reason and the will. 
Such are the two elements of the idea which an 
intelligent being has of what is good for him, or of 
what he ought to do ; first, he conceives that he 
has an end, then the idea of finding out what this 
end is, then the method for determining it ; after- 
ward comes the determination itself of the end by 
the given method which perfects and completes 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 245 

the idea of good, or the idea of what he ought 
to do. 

Such is the complete conception of the idea of 
good for an intelligent being, and therefore for 
man. Let us apply all this to man. He has an 
end. By virtue of the absolute principle that every 
being has an end, he knows that this end is con- 
formable to his nature — that is to say, that he has a 
particular end which is not the end of any other 
being, because he has a particular nature, which is 
not the nature of any other being. From this 
comes the particular method to determine what his 
end is. He must examine what his nature is and 
what end belongs to this nature. The method is 
very simple ; but a long time before the idea of end 
appears in our mind, a long time before the idea 
that we have an end, and that it is relative to our 
nature, shows itself, we proceed toward our end ; 
we proceed toward it from the first day of our 
existence. And indeed, before our reason is 
awakened, and before it comprehends the world 
and man living in the world, our nature fulfills its 
functions — that is, it aspires to, and by aspiring 
impels us toward its true end. It impels us toward 
it by the instincts — that is, by the thousand desires 
which are but the expression of our nature. 'We 
advance, then, toward our end before we have any 
idea that we have an end. "We advance toward it 



246 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

by virtue of the instincts; this is the instinctive 
mode of determination. 

When from the point of view of selfishness we 
have marked out, as the aim of our conduct, the 
greatest satisfaction of our instincts — of our desires, 
or what comes to the same thing, of our nature — 
and we have acted in conformity with this rule, w r e 
are still advancing tow r ard our end ; for to reach 
the greatest satisfaction of our nature is to reach 
our end, since it is to reach that for which our 
nature was made. What difference is there, then, 
between the moral activity, or the moral conduct, 
and the conduct determined by instinct or directed 
by selfishness ? There is this great difference, that 
in the last two cases — that is, in * the conduct 
directed by instinct or selfishness — we have no 
conception of our true law, and we do not act in 
the name of this true law. In other words, we do 
a certain thing— w r hat we wish to do — without 
knowing the reason for which we wish to do it, 
without conceiving that we ought to do it ; w T e do 
by desire that which we are called to do by intelli- 
gence, by reason, by duty. 

And why, gentlemen, in the instinctive deter- 
minations, and in the selfish determinations, do we 
not act in obedience to our true law, in virtue of a 
duty, in a way perfectly intelligible? Because, 
when our reason seeks to account for the motive 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 217 

through which it acts, when it obeys the instinct or 
love of self, it finds no evidence in the two propo- 
sitions expressing these two modes of determination 
— namely, that we ought to do what our instinct 
impels us to, that we ought to seek the greatest 
possible satisfaction of our nature. There is no 
evidence in these two propositions, not any more 
than there is in those other two, which are per- 
fectly identical; that toward which the instinct 
impels us is good, that toward which love of self 
impels is good. If there was any evidence in 
these last two propositions, the propositions " that 
toward which instinct and selfishness impel is what 
we ought to do " would be clear ; but as there is 
no evidence in the former, so there is none in the 
latter. We cannot find the true law in the instincts 
or in selfishness ; for we find no end fulfilling the 
idea of good in our minds, and we therefore find 
no law — that is, what we ought to do. The reason 
is, that although instinct drives us toward our true 
end, although selfishness directs us toward it, we 
have not found onr true law, and we are not moral 
beings so long as we obey merely instinct or allow 
ourselves to be directed by selfishness. We reach 
the moral state on that day only when we compre- 
hend that we have an end, and that this end is only 
an element of good ; as from that time we are 
under the sway of a clear proposition, which com- 



248 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

pletes for us by a true equation the idea of good 
and the idea of what we ought to do ; and more- 
over, this evident proposition, which completely 
satisfies our reason, imposes upon us a new obliga- 
tion for all occasions — the obligation of acting in a 
certain manner to reach a certain good ; we are, in 
a word, under the authority of a law, and of a law 
which is our true law, while before nothing of the 
kind existed. But from this point of view, from 
the point of view that we are explaining, we dis- 
cover that under the impulse of instinct, as well as 
under the direction of selfishness, we are already 
on the road to the accomplishment of our end ; for 
we cannot have the idea, as I have repeated con- 
stantly, that we have an end, without having the 
idea that it is conformable to our nature ; and just 
as instinct is nothing else than the voice of nature, 
selfishness is nothing more than the sum of the 
instincts. It is clear that God has arranged all 
things so that before reason appears in us we 
advance, by the instinctive force alone and by the 
effort of the empirical reason, toward the fulfill- 
ment of our destiny. Thus are reconciled for us 
the instinctive, the selfish and the moral modes ; 
thus all is justified, all explained ; but while showing 
that when obeying the instincts we are in the road 
of our destiny, that when obeying selfishness we are 
still in it, the conception of our having an end shows 



THEORETICAL VIEWS* 249 

us all the difference existing between those modes 
of determination and the other, which consist in obe- 
dience to the moral motive — to the motive that is 
intelligent. I have already described to you the 
contest of our instincts, and all the imperfections in 
our conduct resulting from it. I have also shown 
you that selfishness has not a sufficient compre- 
hension of our vocation, and this is the reason that 
it is subject to a thousand errors. Therefore, in 
practice, our conduct, directed either by instinct or 
selfishness, is full of mistakes. But there is a more 
essential difference still : it is the difference of 
the motive. 

When we obey our instincts we obey ourselves. 
"When we obey selfishness, we still obey ourselves, 
and not a law ; while, in yielding obedience to a 
law by virtue of which we must advance toward 
our end and harmonize with the universal end, we 
obey something which is not ourselves ; our action 
proceeds from something superior to ourselves. In 
a word, our being is elevated by acting in the name 
of the moral motive, while it is not elevated, it 
remains- in itself, w T heu acting in the name of the 
instincts. In the name of selfishness and the in- 
stincts we assist others ; for, sympathy impels us to 
inflict no pain, to do good to others. Self-interest 
well understood makes us understand that if we do 
evil to others, they will do evil to us in turn. 

11* 



250 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

We can, therefore, still respect in this way the end 
of others and even assist them in accomplishing it, 
but it is always through the personal motive. It is 
not by virtue of an evident truth that we do this ; 
our conduct, then, is not moral. But from the day 
on which our end and the end of others appear to 
us as the evident elements of absolute good, that is, 
of the impenetrable designs of God, which, impene- 
trable as they are, are clearly wise and good, from 
that moment we have as much reason to wish the 
good of others, to respect it, to aid it, as we have 
to wish our own. Consequently this good becomes 
as sacred in our eyes as our own, and as sacred as 
the absolute good which we cannot comprehend. 
From that moment we are just, benevolent, chari- 
table by virtue of a law — by virtue of an imperso- 
nal motive. Such is the difference existing between 
these three modes of conduct, proceeding from 
three inspirations which agree, but which are not 
identical. You shall see the step which we take 
when we leave selfishness behind to enter into 
the moral mode. You see that we enter by means 
of the reason, which solves, by a clear equa- 
tion the problem ; " What is good ?" And as soon 
as this solution is found by the reason, the idea of 
our good is established ; the idea of its being obliga- 
tory is established ; and a method is given to deter- 
mine where the good is which can be applied to 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 251 

the whole creation. Furnished with this funda- 
mental and supreme idea, that the end of all things 
is absolute good, that the end of each thing is the 
good of each thing, and that the particular ends of 
all beings are the elements of the absolute end, and 
consequently fragments of the absolute good, fur- 
nished with this supreme idea and the method 
which follows to determine the end of the whole or 
of particular beings, we end by means of the appli- 
cation in this result : that it is necessary in order 
to determine the end of a being, that the nature of 
this being should be studied and known. Now, in 
this vast universe, not only the nature of a multi- 
tude of beings perceptible to our senses cannot be 
known by us profoundly and thoroughly, but more- 
over the immensity of this world escapes us, and 
we see but a very small point of it ; and, therefore, 
although we are sure that the whole has an end, 
and that in this whole each thing has an end, as 
we can determine the end only of a very small 
number of beings, we are bound to respect only 
this small number of beings ; for we cannot respect 
those we do not know. Therefore in the portion 
known to us of the end of each thing, we are con- 
nected with the universal end — with universal 
order, which is only the accomplishment of this 
end. But we cannot be connected with it other- 
wise than by particulars, we cannot be connected 



252 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

with it m the whole. Therefore, the cause of our 
duties being so limited in this life and hardly ex- 
tending beyond ourselves and our fellow beings, is 
the fact that we do not know clearly, plainly, the 
end of other beings surrounding us. As soon as 
w r e pass to animals, to plants, to minerals, to all 
creatures which with us fill up this world — itself a 
scarcely perceptible fragment of the universe — 
obscurity comes upon us. Who can tell us why 
plants, why animals were created ? Here the diffi- 
culty commences, here duty becomes obscure. For 
us, our end has already been pointed out by the 
nature of our desires, of our propensities ; the end 
of other men, of our fellow creatures, is the same 
as ours ; this portion of order is, therefore, sacred 
for us, because we know it. Beyond this portion 
of order that we know, the light vanishes ; nothing 
more that is certain appears to us ; from this point 
duty ceases, or at least becomes feebler. But when 
we leave the limits of this world and ask ourselves 
what is the end of the earth ? w r hat is the end of 
the beings inhabiting this globe ? w T hat is the end 
of the whole ? then all light disappears ; and the 
method w r hich determines the end can no longer be 
applied ; but there remains one truth, it is that 
everything has an end, that this end is God, since 
God has imposed it ; that the law of the universe, 
which we do not know, is the progress followed 



TIir.ORETICAL VIEWS. 253 

according to the laws willed by God. Then, Ave 
are united by thought and by the heart to this uni- 
versal order ; we can respect it only from afar; we 
can neither aid nor oppose it. It remains only 
more sacred for us to realize the portion of order 
which we ought to accomplish, and which the 
beings around us, who resemble us, are charged to 
accomplish. Here is the limit, here duty ceases. 
You perceive that the form of the moral idea em- 
braces all, but you perceive at the same time that 
the matter, if I can say so, is wholly limited. 

Let us apply, then, gentlemen, to the human 
individual the method to determine his end and let 
us see what this method gives us. In determining 
my end, I determine the end of all beings resem- 
bling mvself. 

Gentlemen, I devoted the lectures of a year to 
the determination of man's end, and in this lecture 
I can only recapitulate in a very rapid way what I 
have already said. When I shall come to the 
different parts of the rule of human conduct, you 
will see that I descend from these generalities in 
order to establish in each of the principal situations 
in which man can be placed what his end is, and 
bow he must act in order to reach it. For these 
two reasons : first, because I have devoted a whole 
year to solve the general problem of man's end ; 



254: THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

secondly, because the entire continuation of this 
course is to be the development of this inquiry ; 
and finally, because I have only this one lecture to 
give you, I am obliged to limit myself to the 
broadest generalities. You will, however, have a 
general view of the whole, and this is what I ought 
to give you in an introduction to ethics. 

Gentlemen, the idea we have of man according 
to our observations shows us that there exists in him 
instincts, tendencies, desires, through which his 
nature is expressed and is revealed primitively, and 
as long as he lives in this world ; that, moreover, 
there exist in him faculties — that is, instruments 
which answer to his desires and to the tendencies 
expressed by his nature, and each of which has 
clearly for its aim the satisfaction of some of these 
tendencies ; that he possesses a faculty of compre- 
hension, the object of which is to enlighten him on 
the nature of things which his being calls for 
through his desires, and the best employment of his 
faculties for the satisfaction of these same desires ; 
lastly, there is in him a directive force, called will 
or self-control, which has for its object, under the 
superior authority of intelligence and of reason, or 
the faculty of comprehension, to direct these differ- 
ent instruments placed in him, in the best way for 
reaching the satisfaction of his nature. 



' THEORETICAL VIEWS. 255 

This is what philosophy teaches in regard to the 
faculties of human nature. This is the most com- 
plete division of the faculties. 

For example, to cite particular cases, we have an 
ardent desire for knowledge ; it is one of the most 
persevering tendencies of our nature, it is also one 
of those tendencies which manifest themselves from 
the very moment of our existence in this world. 
We have a faculty corresponding to this tendency, 
charged with its satisfaction, which is called the 
intellect. The intellect itself contains a faculty of 
comprehension, which causes us to see our desire of 
knowledge ; which sees that consequently it is in 
conformity with our end, that we should satisfy it, 
and that we have a faculty made for it; which 
teaches us in what way we must direct this faculty 
to attain the greatest possible satisfaction of the 
tendency. Finally, with the aid of the will, we 
carry into effect, while governing^ our intellectual 
faculty, that which is prescribed by the reason, or 
the comprehending faculty. 

Let us notice also the harmony of all the parts in 
another .example. We have a tendency not less 
strong, not less permanent, primitive, essential to 
our nature; it is sympathy, which in its most gene- 
ral acceptation and tendency impels us to a union, 
a harmony, an association with all that which, far 
or near, is active like ourselves — that is, all that is 



256 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

a cause or energy. It unites us, or impels us to 
unite ourselves, especially with all those beings 
who, like us, are intelligent and free causes ; it 
unites us less strongly with beings that are less 
intelligent and active, like the animals ; less and 
less strongly with the plants, because they also 
have life and a development ; finally, with every- 
thing which in the creation has something of our 
nature — that is, which is a cause, a cause in all pos- 
sible degrees. Sympathy has all this breadth ; it 
impels us to a union with all that lives, commencing 
with God and ending with the lowest created being 
possessing a spark of life. Sympathy is satisfied 
but very imperfectly in this life ; of all our tenden- 
cies it is the least satisfied. A number of our 
faculties answer to this tendency and have for their 
special object its satisfaction. To cite only one, I 
will take the faculty of expression, the faculty which 
puts us in communication with other men, which 
permits us to make them participate in all our 
wishes and in all our thoughts. Governed in a cer- 
tain way by our will, with the light of our intel- 
lect which sees why it was created and what it is 
charged with accomplishing in this w T prld, this 
faculty succeeds in gaining in this life a pretty 
complete satisfaction of the sympathetic tendency. 

You perceive the agreement between the ten- 
dency on the one hand, the faculty on the other, 



THEORETICAL VIKWS. 257 

and then the directing or executive power, made up 
of the will and the intellect. This is what we con- 
stantly find in ourselves. This phenomenon, which 
I have just shown you in two cases, is repeated 
relatively in all our tendencies, so that we can 
discover the absolute end of man, resulting from 
his nature, if we make a psychological examination 

of all the tendencies of our constitution. Psvcho- 

t/ 

logy, which is the foundation, the point of depart- 
ure, the condition of all the philosophical sciences 
whatsoever, although not the only one, is not very 
far advanced ; and the proof is that we will search 
in vain in the annals of philosophy, commencing 
with Thales and ending with Condillac, for a vigor- 
ous, serious and profound study of the primitive 
tendencies, or what I have called in the course of 
these lectures, the primitive instincts of human 
nature; and yet it is here that we discover the 
secret of men's conduct, for it is through them that 
man's nature expresses itself, that it reveals its 
organization and why it was created. I know that 
this is not the whole end of humanity ; that it is 
not less the end from the fact that these tendencies 
are satisfied in a certain way than that they are 
satisfied at all. I believe, and it is clear to me, 
that the rational, free, voluntary, intelligent, active 
mode, by which these tendencies must attain their 
satisfaction, is not less essential to the end of man 



258 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

than the satisfaction itself. But, finally, the solu- 
tion of the question, which has for its aim the end 
of man, is, in reality, in the determination of these 
tendencies, in what they are distinct from each 
other, and as to the different objects toward which 
they impel us. If, for instance, you perceive in 
the nature of man, out of ten tendencies (suppos- 
ing that number) only five, the half of man 
escapes you. Suppose you do not perceive in the 
nature of man the tendency about which I have 
just spoken to you — sympathy — you will perhaps 
place the whole end of man in knowledge, you will 
believe that love does not exist at all. Suppose in 
your analysis you fail to find activity, or the desire 
of doing, or the love of power, or ambition, this 
tendency suppressed, an essential part of man is 
suppressed at the same time. Again, if you sup- 
press curiosity or the desire which impels us to 
knowledge, you will not perceive that absolute 
science is embraced in the true end of man. 
Therefore, according as we make a more or less 
exact, a more or less truthful analysis of the primi- 
tive tendencies of human nature, we come to a 
more or less exact, a more or less truthful determi- 
nation of the true end of man, such as results from 
his nature. 

In telling you this, I wish merely to show you 
how we must proceed in order to discover the end 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 259 

of man ; for in fact, although philosophers have 
not ascertained the end of humanity, this has not 
hindered humanity from advancing towards its end. 
It is impossible for humanity not to be perpetually 
and continually in the true road of its end, and of 
its complete end ; this does not depend in the least 
upon philosophy, or upon the accuracy of its re- 
sults ; if humanity had to wait for the results of 
philosophy, before advancing toward its end, hu- 
manity would have ceased to exist long since. 
Whatever may be the results of philosophy, human 
nature, acting in each man, impels each man (and 
consequently the whole of humanity) toward his 
end. To determine what this end is, is not the less 
a question of the highest importance ; for it is the 
knowledge of a thing which takes place entirely 
alone, instinctively ; it is to place clearly in the 
moral law that which each one feels rather by in- 
spiration than any other way. And you see that, 
in this case as in all others, philosophy goes no 
further than to make clear what all the world 
knows. This is the way that science should pro- 
ceed in order to arrive at a determination of man's 
end. 

Kow, I come to another point which is of great 
importance : it is, that the end of man, such as 
results from his nature — such as his nature implies 
— is not completely accomplished in this life, and 



260 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

even is incapable of being completely accomplished 
in this life. 

Gentlemen, take any tendency of your nature, 
and see if this tendency is in any human indivi- 
dual, or in the whole human species, completely 
satisfied. It is evident that it is completely satis- 
fied neither in the individual nor in the species. It 
is evid nt, besides, that so long as the world is con- 
stituted as it is, and it cannot be constituted other- 
wise than as it is, it is impossible for any of the 
tendencies of our nature to be completely satisfied 
either in the individual or species. Do you know 
what is the satisfaction of a tendency of our nature ? 
For the intellect, it is absolute knowledge : for sym- 
pathy, it is the absolute union and perfect harmony 
of beings among themselves. 'Now it is very clear, 
to stop at these two examples, that absolute know- 
ledge and harmony, and a perfect union of beings 
among themselves, cannot be absolutely realized in 
the organization of this world, such as it is. Let it 
not be said that this depends on the organization 
of society, and that by organizing society differ- 
ently we could reach a perfect and complete satis- 
faction of the tendencies of our nature, as.a modern 
sect lays claim. There is no organization of society 
which can attain to absolute knowledge ; there is no 
organization of society which can attain to a com- 
plete union of beings among themselves in this world. 



theouktical views. 261 

Undoubtedly, b} r more or less skillful organisations 

of society we can increase the sum of the satisfac- 
tion of the different tendencies of our nature, and 
perhaps of all. It is in this that the progress of 
the social science consists. Thus at the present 
time the sympathy of each individual is infinitely 
better satisfied than it was during the barbarous 
ages or pastoral times, or when people were hunt- 
ers, or in the different situations at which we have 
seen the human species successively arrive in the 
career of civilization. Undoubtedly, curiosity and 
sympathy are infinitely better satisfied in the pre- 
sent order of things than in the past ; but compare 
the realization with the complete satisfaction of our 
tendencies, and you will readily understand that 
there is no social organization which can remedy 
the inevitable evil attached to the condition of this 
world. 

We can, then, advance by civilization toward 
the end for which our nature was created, but we 
cannot attain it in a world organized as this is. 

All the labor of humanity tends toward this 
end, and toward these different elements; but 
humanity tends toward it with a perpetual resist- 
ance on the part of things. It advances, but the 
end is imposssible to be attained ; the end is beyond 
the reach of the efforts of humanity. At the pre- 
sent time we can without doubt congratulate our- 



262 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

selves at having arrived, in the career of the end 
of humanity, at a certain point where life is quite 
comfortable ; but life is pleasant relatively, and when 
we have come to the limits of human knowledge 
such as it exists, the problems the most interesting to 
us remain still unsolved, and not only those which 
we conceive, but those we do not conceive ; for we 
know that in the career of human knowledge a 
multitude of problems spring up and branch out 
into others ; the career extends in proportion to the 
development of knowledge. To meet with obsta- 
cles is therefore the characteristic of the human 
condition ; the obstacles encountered by all our 
faculties, all working for the satisfaction of our ten- 
dencies, the obstacles are here, they are in the con- 
dition of this world. This world organized as it 
is, is the meeting in opposition of the different des- 
tinies, of the different developments. Every being 
limits the other, and is limited by all the others ; 
we limit each other mutually, and the whole art 
of civilization for the human species only consists 
in putting in harmony, in rendering parallel forces 
which were not so naturally. Every new discovery 
in social science tends to make parallel, forces 
which were in opposition, and all the discoveries 
of the natural or physical sciences only tend to 
place in harmony with our force the blind forces 
which were before opposed to it. Thus, whenever 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 263 

we discover the law of a natural force — of steam, 
of air — what happens ? Knowing the law of this 
blind force, we direct the force in the way of our 
designs ; although formerly opposed to us, it be- 
comes now our assistant, it becomes an instrument 
in our hands. Civilization tends to plade in har- 
mony all the forces animating it, particularly the 
human forces ; for, before civilization, these forces 
were more or less opposed. But between complete 
harmony and the degree of harmony which hu- 
man power can in time establish between the forces 
animating the world, there will always remain an 
immeasurable interval. 

From this it follows that the absolute end of man 
such as results from his nature, is not to be real- 
ized in this world ; consequently, that man and the 
species have not been placed in this world in order 
to attain the realization of this end ; for if they 
had been placed here for that purpose, the world 
would have been so constituted that this could 
have been possible. Now this is not so ; therefore 
it is not fortius purpose that they have been placed 
here. It -is therefore evident that the end of the 
present life is not this absolute end, that it is dis- 
tinct from it. It remains for us to find out what 
the end of the present life is. 

Gentlemen, when we look at it closely, we find 
that this very circumstance of the present condi- 



264 TIircOKI'TICAL VIEWS. 

lion putting obstacle* in the way of the satisfaction 
of all our tendencies, and the development of all 
our faculties, produces and creates m us certain 
things which are of the highest importance for us 
and for the accomplishment of our destiny. When 
we look at the thing still more closely, we find that 
the obstacles are so important that it is indispensa- 
ble that they should exist. When we have come 
to this point, the present life, with all its miseries, 
is completely explained : it is proved to be neces-* 
sary for man's destiny. "What is created in*us by 
an obstacle, or the present condition ? There is 
created in the first place the direction of our facul- 
ties by the will and the reason ; for, if we suppose 
that at the beginning, in the infant, all the instincts 
of his nature impelling him to endeavor to satisfy 
his faculties, he had met with no difficulty, no ob- 
stacle to this kind of satisfaction, it is clear that 
the will or self control would never have been awa- 
kened in him. It is clear, morever, that if the rea- 
son had been awakened in him, it would have 
existed merely for the purpose of contemplating 
the being advancing toward its end naturally, and 
without hindrance, and without interfering in any 
way. Reason would be in us what it is in regard 
to external things — a simple spectator ; and as to 
the will and liberty, they would never be awakened 
because they would not be necessary. What 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 265 

makes the intervention of the will necessary — that 
is, the control acquired by man over himself, and 
the constant and continual direction of his facul- 
ties, is the fact that the faculties not directed come 
to be directed against the obstacle, and know not 
how to turn it aside. The intelligent direction of 
liberty is needed to turn the obstacle aside, or to 
overthrow it when it can be overthrown. Liberty, 
or the control we have over ourselves, concentrates 
upon the point which resists, the whole strength of 
our faculties, thus acquiring a fivefold or tenfold 
power. Besides, the intellect has recourse to a 
method — to an art — to certain means to assist the 
strength of the faculties or supply its wants, 
when this strength is not sufficiently great to turn 
aside the obstacle, or when the obstacle cannot be 
overthrown. 

Thus in the road of the accomplishment of our des- 
tiny, the obstacle met by our tendencies and liberty 
awakes in us liberty and creates personality — that is, 
the being who knows that he controls himself, who 
makes use of what he possesses in himself to advance 
toward his end, comprehends this end and sees it. 

This is what is created by the obstacle. Isow, 
this obstacle is the condition of humanity. If it 
did not exist there would be for us neither liberty, 
(for it would not be awakened in us) nor even vir- 
tue or vice, good or evil ; man would not be. a 

12 



266 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

moral being. In what does the moral good con- 
sist? In the free and intelligent accomplishment, 
through the will, of the law ; that is, of our order : 
that is, again, of our end in each particular circum- 
stance. Without this, we would be given up to 
the impetuosity of our momentary passions. But 
the intellect exists in man, which plans what ought 
to be done ; the will exists, which will carry the 
plan into execution. When the will does so it is 
praiseworthy ; when it does not do so it is blame- 
worthy. It is this which makes man moral, wor- 
thy. Personality on the one hand, morality on the 
other, result from the present condition. If we 
suppose a condition containing no obstacles to our 
end, all this would be impossible ; we would pro- 
ceed toward our end in a passive manner, if we can 
say so, speaking of something active. It would be 
like the spring of a watch, once wound up by the 
hand of the workman, gradually unwinding itself 
and marking the hours until night ; but this spring 
would never participate in the effect produced. 
We would remain things, we would not become 
persons. Such is the difference between things 
and persons. How comes it that w r e rise-from the 
low condition of a being w T ho is only a thing, to the 
sublime condition of a person ? How comes it that 
there exists moral good which we are to attain ? It 
comes from the fact that the world is made as it is ; 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 267 

from the fact that we do not make a single step 
towards our end except by the sweat of our brow. 
Another thing comes into my hypothesis : it is 
this — that the very happiness resulting from the 
satisfaction of our nature (for it is in the agreeable 
sensation which itself results from this satisfaction) 
* would exist perfect for each individual, but for this 
very reason would not be felt. And in fact we 
only perceive our happiness or the agreeable sensa- . 
tion by the contrast with our disagreeable sensa- 
tions. A being who meets with a complete and 
continual satisfaction of all the desires of his na- 
ture as his natural state, and whose mortal life 
flows on in this satisfaction, this being would not 
assuredly feel evil ; but he would be insensible to 
his good. "What causes us to feel our happiness, is 
the present life — a life whose condition is misery. 
Moreover, for our reason, happiness which has 
not been deserved is without worth, is nothing. 
There is a conception in our reason which tells us 
that merit is the condition of happiness, its natural 
and true condition, that happiness before merit is 
an unmeaning term : that happiness is in our end, 
since it is the necessary effect of the accomplish- 
ment of our end, but that it is as the recompense 
of the effort that we make to attain and conquer 
our end. In other words, our reason subordinates, 
as effect and consequence, happiness and virtue, 



2t>8 THEORETICAL VIEWS* 

happiness and effort. Now, in the hypothesis, 
which is contrary to actual life, if happiness should 
come before merit, there would never be any possi- 
bility either of virtue or morality arising. To 
realize these, man must become like God. Now, 
what does God do ? He creates by his will and 
intelligence : he is the high and perfect person. 
For a human individual to become a personal crea- 
ture and cease being a thing, to become like God, 
and unite freely and voluntarily in the plan of the 
creation within the narrow limits of his power, to 
become virtuous, to arrive at moral dignity, to feel 
happiness, to be worthy of it, there is needed not a 
condition in which the accomplishment of the end 
may be possible, but where it may be impossible — 
that is, a condition full of obstacles. 

The present life is not, then, an accident; the 
present life is necessary ; it is not only explained, 
it is completely justified. There is not a person 
who would wish, who would even dare in his 
thoughts, to prefer the happy condition which 
I described a short time ago to the condition given 
us by this life. Yes, every man who has the feel- 
ing of the- dignity of being a person, of the dignity 
c-f being able to be virtuous, of being able to unite 
with God in the plan of the creation, of the dignity 
of being able to comprehend it, of being able to 
feel universal order, to, catch a glimpse of it, to 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 269 

realize it in himself — no man who has this in his 
mind (and every man has it to a certain degree) 
can hesitate to prefer the actual good such as 
it is with the physical and moral evil mingled 
with it, to the condition which would have at- 
tended us in an order of things in which we would 
have experienced a complete satisfaction of our 
tendencies. 

The present life is, therefore, preeminently good, 
because it is preeminently bad. Its excellence is in 
the evil it contains ; for the price of this evil is 
morality, is personality. If this, is so, two conse- 
quences follow : the first, that the end of this life is 
not so much in the advance we may make toward 
our absolute end — that is to say, toward knowledge, 
toward power, toward a union with beings like our- 
selves, or different from us ; that the end is not so 
much this, as it is the production of moral good — 
the energetic, all-powerful creation of personality 
in us. To render ourselves free, that is to say, mas- 
ters of ourselves, to make use of this liberty in the 
way of our true end, not to act through passion or 
through calculation, but in the name of order, this 
is the true end of this life; and it is the true end 
of this life because it depends upon ourselves to 
attain it, while the other end does not depend upon 
us. It is this which in our minds justifies the 
Creator in the inequality with which he seems to 



270 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

have distributed the different beings which have 
succeeded each other in time. I have been born 
in an advanced and civilized society, in which the 
sum of happiness is great, the amount of evil con- 
siderably diminished — or, thanks to enlightenment, 
to education, to tradition, I see more clearly my 
duty and can accomplish it more easily. There is 
no equality between my position and that of the 
savage in the forests of North America, the Huns 
and the Vandals who invaded the Roman empire. 
There is no equality between the present condition 
and the condition of the people who wandered in 
their forests ten centuries before the Christian era. 
Yes, there appears to exist a great inequality ; it 
would be immense if the end of this life was the 
attainment of the true end of man. But the true 
end of life is the creation in oneself of the human, 
the moral person. Now this creation may be as 
complete in the savage as in civilized man. And 
indeed, gentlemen, merit is not proportioned to the 
light. I may either just catch a glimpse of my 
true end, or see but few elements of it, or take a 
more comprehensive view of it. This is the differ- 
ence between the savage, the barbarian and myself. 
If with my conscience, in the first case, I am as 
faithful to one or two of the first points of order as 
to the thousand which I now perceive, I am just as 
virtuous ; if I make as many efforts to reach a 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 271 

perfect end as I do in a better state to reach to a 
more perfect end, I am just as virtuous, I have 
accomplished the true end of this life. The true 
end of this life does not depend upon any external 
cause, it depends entirely upon the individual. We 
all carry in ourselves the realization of our true 
destiny here below, provided we bring to it all our 
intelligence for its comprehension, all our courage 
to proceed. 

This is, then, the true end of the present life, 
which can only be accomplished in proportion as 
we proceed toward the absolute end. 

A second consequence is even more evident, or 
as evident as the first, and certainly as important 
We have just ascertained the condition of the pre- 
sent life, and what condition ? The condition that 
in this life shall be realized the qualities of our 
nature, which will render us worthy of our true 
end — of our absolute end. All, then, that we have 
just said would be absurd if there was not another 
or several other lives. My nature is of a certain 
mold ; in virtue of its organization, it possesses 
desires which have an end or an object. An intel- 
lect exists in me which comprehends the entire 
capacity of these desires — a sensibility which is 
exceedingly unhappy, for these desires die power- 
less and cannot be satisfied on this earth. I 
possess, besides, certain faculties, all of which, in 



272 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

spite of obstacles, have the necessary power to 
satisfy these tendencies. All this I would compre- 
hend in myself ; I would be unhappy in the present 
condition ; I would explain to myself this condition ; 
I would see its necessity, its conveniences in a cer- 
tain hypothesis which my whole nature demands, 
and would this hypothesis be merely an impossible 
— an absurd chimera? On the contrary, the great- 
est absurdity imaginable would be that the present 
life was the whole ; I do not know of any greater 
absurdity in any branch of science. The greatest 
absurdity and the greatest contradiction imaginable 
would be, that the present life was the whole — 
therefore there will be another. 

"Will this life be one or many? Will it be a 
succession of lives in which the obstacles w r ill con- 
tinually diminish, or shall we rather be cast, in 
leaving this life, into a life without obstacles ? We 
may choose between these two hypotheses. What 
we can assert under penalty of condemning the. 
universe, the world, the present life, man, God, 
everything for absurdity, is that the present life is 
not the whole, and that the end of another life will 
be the accomplishment of our true end, and no 
longer the creation of the moral personality, unless 
we suppose a succession of lives in which this per- 
sonality may be increased until the personal creation 
will be perfected, and until there shall be given a 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 273 

life in which the true end of man is possible — is 
complete. 

Such, gentlemen, is my opinion of the founda- 
tion and the tendency of morality. I have exhibit- 
ed it to you in the metaphysical part with all the 
obscurity and inconveniences which this part 
always draws with it ; you can, however, through 
all the imperfection of my explanation, perceive 
the outline, but I have not yet paid any attention 
to the details ; when I come to these details, they 
will merely make clear that which I have left 
obscure. 



LECTURE VIII. 

THEORETIGAL VIEWS CONTINUED. 

You have noticed, gentlemen, that in all that I 
have said in regard to my doctrine relative to the 
groundwork of morality, I have been employed 
particularly in determining the idea of good. 
This is, in fact, the fundamental point. Around 
this idea and the conceptions which produce it in 
man's mind, there are besides other facts which are 
equally moral facts, because they accompany the 
notion of good ; and not only because they accom- 
pany it, but because they perfect it. I have some- 
what neglected all these necessary facts, and I 
neglected them because I remembered that I had 
already given you a course of lectures on general 
morality, and that in that course of lectures I had 
explained at length not only the moral conception 
properly so called, but also all the conceptions and 
all the facts obviously belonging to it. I remem- 
bered that my object in a course of lectures on 
ethics ought to be only to go rapidly over the 
foundations of morality, resting chiefly on the 

274 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 275 

notion of good, because it is from this notion of 
good in itself that must proceed for each of the 
situations in which man can be placed the rules of 
conduct to which he must hold in each of these 
situations. Nevertheless, before proceeding to the 
different branches of ethics, it is well to recall for 
this audience the facts accompanying the moral 
fact properly so called, w^hich complete it, which 
add to the notion of good other very important 
notions. This is what I shall do in this lecture, 
which will be the last of the introductory lectures, 
in pointing out to you the facts enveloping the 
moral fact properly so called. I shall besides run 
over the logical order of the different moral con- 
ceptions, so that you will find in this lecture, or at 
least I shall try to place before you, not only the 
accessory points which I did not touch upon in the 
former lectures, but also a kind of review of my 
opinions on the principles of morality. 

* Gentlemen, two kinds of facts follow the concep- 
tion of absolute good; rational facts like the 
conception itself, and sensible facts. The idea of 
good cannot enter into our minds without other 
ideas being produced in us immediately and in its 
train — ideas which the first gives birth to, because 
between the idea of good and these other ideas 
there is a necessary connection. The first of these 
ideas, inevitably awakened in us by the conception 



276 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

of good,, is the idea of obligation. We cannot 
separate these two ideas of good and of obligation. 
As soon as we have placed under the word good the 
true idea represented by the word, immediately 
that which we have just placed under the word 
good appears obligatory ; and a long time before we 
have formed to ourselves a clear idea of what is 
represented by the word good, the confused idea we 
have of it appears to us as if implying obligation. 
There is not, gentlemen , a closer connection be- 
tween the idea of what is good and the idea of 
what ought to be done, than there is between the 
idea of figure and the thing figured — that is to say, 
between the ideas implying it the most intimately. 
So that, for instance, to ask why good ought to be 
done, is precisely like asking why that which ought 
to be done ought to be done. For between what is 
good and what ought to be done, there is such a 
necessary relation that the one of these ideas is the 
other ; as far as one can make use of the character 
of obligation to determine what is good, so far did 
Kant. This proposition that what is good ought 
to be done is self-evident, just as much as the pro- 
position that every effect has a cause ; there is 
between both a perfect similarity both of authority 
and necessity, and both are derived from the same 
source, which is intuitive reason. 

Gentlemen, no idea of good, other than that of an 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 277 

end, draws in its train the idea of obligation, prov- 
ing that the other ideas of good are not the idea of 
what is truly good in itself. Thus we call know- 
ledge, power, and many other things toward which 
our propensities draw us, good. Try to conceive one 
of these things as obligatory, such as ought to be 
pursued, your reason will refuse to do it. Why ? 
Because the thing is not good in itself. It is only 
on that day when the idea of true good being con- 
ceived, we perceive that the good to which our 
propensities impel us is part of the true good, that 
obligation attaches to the pursuit of this particular 
good ; but this obligation is attached to the idea 
of the true good — to good in itself; and it is only 
because certain things have been shown to be ema- 
nations of good in itself, that it is obligatory to do 
them. Some day, for instance, it becomes obli- 
gatory upon us to develop our intellect, conse- 
quently to pursue the good, which is the knowledge 
of the truth. But so long as we are impelled 
toward this good only by the propensity existing in 
us, and so long as we do not conceive this propen- 
sity as the development of our end, obligation does 
not appear to us. Obligation is not attached to 
the pursuit of good which is called personal, for 
the idea of personal good is not the idea of true 
good ; and it is only on that day when the idea of 
personal good has been proved to be one of the 



278 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

elements of the idea of absolute good that personal 
good appears to us as obligatory. 

The conception that good in itself is obligatory 
is not the only one produced in us by the idea of 
good ; the practice, no longer the simple conception 
of good, but the practice, or the realization of good 
by an agent, draws with it another idea. The idea 
is this : whoever does good, merits — that is, is 
worthy of happiness ; and whoever does evil, merits 
— that is, is worthy of unhappiness and misery. 
These two words, happiness and misery, in this 
case have been expressed by the w r ords recompense 
and punishment. This translation is not unfaithful, 
for it is implied in the idea of merit and demerit. 
It is impossible for us to be the spectators of the 
goodness of a free and intelligent agent without con- 
ceiving that from the very fact of this agent's doing 
good, this agent is more worthy of happiness than 
an agent who does not do good, that he is more 
worthy for a much stronger reason than an agent 
who does evil; for in seeing an agent who does 
evil knowingly, we w r ould consider it just that he 
should be punished for acting immorally — in a 
word, he appears to us as deserving of punishment. 

Why does he who does good appear to us as 
deserving praise? We cannot account for the 
immediate and absolute principles conceived by 
reason. We cannot explain why a fact which 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 279 

commences to exist has a cause ; our mind must 
conceive it as an absolute truth, allowing no excep- 
tion. Our mind also has to conceive that an agent 
who does good deserves praise. This establishes a 
necessary connection, and which has a great con- 
sequence in religion, between the practice of good 
or virtue and happiness. So that we can conclude, 
as Kant has done, from this alone, that happiness 
does not always follow virtue in this world, that 
this life is not definitive, that there must be another 
under penalty of absurdity — that is, under penalty 
of violating the absolute laws of truth, such as it 
is conceived by reason. 

Gentlemen, this idea that an agent who does 
good deserves praise only comes to us when we 
think of true good — that is, of what is good in 
itself; for neither the good to which our propensi- 
ties impel us, nor personal good such as we see 
practised and realized by our fellow beings, or 
which we ourselves practise and realize, suggests 
this judgment to us ; and if we try to conceive this 
relation in regard to one of those goods, our reason 
refuses to do it. Therefore, from the fact that a 
man animated by a strong passion pursues the 
object of this passion, it does not follow in the least 
that he deserves praise for that ; on the contrary, 
we consider that he is doing a very simple thing, 
that it is natural for him to do it ; that if he resisted 



280 THEOKETICAL VIEWS. 

this passion in order not to debase himself or not to 
harm his fellow beings, then we w r ould consider 
him as deserving praise. When he merely yields 
to an instinct, although the aim of the instinct may 
be good, we cannot recognize any merit in the man. 
Man, in his personal aim, when he calculates the 
best good of the world, does not seem to us to 
deserve praise for that ; we regard him as paying 
himself with his own hands, for he is seeking his 
greatest pleasure ; it would be ridiculous to say that 
he deserves happiness because he pursues his plea- 
sure. True good is the only one which appears to 
ns as obligatory, and the only one also the practice 
of which seems to us as rendering him who con- 
forms to it deserving of praise. There is a third 
principle, or a third circumstance, which is likewise 
connected with the idea of good, or rather with the 
idea of the practice of good — it is. the idea of moral 
beauty. This idea has not been considered, as gen- 
erally as the two former, as one of the ideas which 
follow the conception of good or the spectacle of 
the practice of good. When at the sight of a good 
action we experience a certain pleasure, it is not an 
effect without a cause, a fact without an explana- 
tion; it is not, in other words, an arbitrary event 
that is produced. When I taste a fruit, and it 
produces in me a certain sensation, and I wish to 
know why it produces this sensation rather than 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 281 

another, I cannot find a reason for it, I see nothing 
necessary in it, and I say : it is because I have been 
constituted arbitrarily in a certain way, and that the 
organization, also arbitrary, of this fruit produces 
in me a certain sensation and not another. There 
is no necessary and legitimate relation for my rea- 
son between the cause produced by this effect and 
this effect itself, at least I cannot conceive it. Is it 
the same when, at the sight of a good action, I 
experience pleasure, I experience an agreeable 
emotion, and at the sight of a bad action, a dis- 
agreeable and painful emotion? , It is not so, for it 
appears to me that it belongs to the nature of the 
practice of good, or of good itself, to please, that 
is to say, to be agreeable to whoever has a reason 
and an intellect to comprehend good ; in other 
words, this necessary connection, which appears to 
me to exist between the idea of good and the idea 
of pleasure produced by good, is not an effect 
which appears to me arbitrary. If the contrary 
existed, if there was a reasonable creature on whom 
good, the spectacle of virtue, could cause a painful 
impression, I would regard it as a complete over- 
turning of the laws of nature, I would consider it 
absurd, incomprehensible, inconceivable, so little 
arbitrary does it appear to me that the spectacle of 
virtue should please ! I find, in other words, an 
immediate relation between the cause which pro- 



282 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

duces tliis effect and this effect itself. Undoubtedly 
this conception has neither the evidence nor the 
importance in human life of the two conceptions 
about which I spoke to you formerly. That good 
appears to us obligatory, that he who does it 
appears to us as deserving praise, these are ideas of 
the highest importance which, have a boundless 
consequence on the destiny of man. If there is 
the least obscurity, the least uncertainty about it, 
the w r orld would stop and change. But it is a 
matter of no importance whether or not people 
agree that it is in the nature of virtue to please 
every reasonable and sensible being. The fact is, 
whenever a virtuous act is seen by us, it pleases us ; 
whenever vice is shown us, it displeases us. It is, 
then, only in seeking the cause of these two effects 
that we discover there is nothing arbitrary in it, 
and that we conceive the relation existing between 
virtue as a spectacle and pleasure as an esthetic 
emotion produced by this spectacle. 

This conception is not less characteristic than the 
former of the idea of true good and of true virtue ; 
for, if we judge that virtue is beautiful by itself, 
necessarily, inevitably, we do not judge that selfish- 
ness is beautiful truly, inevitably. No more do w r e 
judge that it is a necessary property of the passion 
to be beautiful ; this does not prevent the passion, 
or selfishness, from being able to please us, but in 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 283 

another way. That which pleases us in passion, 
that which causes, for instance, the passions violently 
agitating the actors on the stage to move all human 
hearts throughout the theatre, is sympathy ancLnot 
a judgment of the reason. But when we see on 
the stage a virtuous man, who makes sacrifices for 
his duty, not only before reasoning do we experi- 
ence an agreeable emotion, but even in reasoning 
we regard it as natural, legitimate, necessary that 
such a sight should produce in us such an effect, 
while we cannot explain reasonably how and why 
it is necessary that the spectacle of dying Zaire 
should, move us and give us pleasure. Indeed, it is 
the simple constitution of our nature which does it ; 
it is because we were created sympathetic. If we 
had not been created sympathetic, this sight would 
not have affected us. But from the fact alone that 
we have been created intelligent and reasonable, 
the spectacle of virtue pleases our intellect, and 
causes the quiet, intellectual pleasure which is the 
peculiarity of the pleasure produced by the sight 
of virtue. 

Such are the three great conceptions which fol- 
low, which accompany necessarily (the first two 
with perfect clearness, the last with considerable 
obscurity) the conception of good, or the concep- 
tion of virtue. Now, other facts are produced in 



284 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

us in the train of the idea of good and virtue. 
These facts are purely sensible. 

The first is that of which I have already spoken 
to you ; it is the pleasure of emotion produced in us 
by the spectacle of virtue or moral good ; the con- 
trary spectacle, the spectacle of vice or of moral 
evil, causes a disagreeable impression. When we 
ourselves do good or evil, there is no longer a spec- 
tacle before us, but the practice itself; the accom- 
plishment by us of good or evil produces in our 
souls stronger emotions, although of the same 
nature, which are also agreeable or painful. 

Gentlemen, that which characterizes these two 
kinds of pleasure and pain, the pleasures and 
pains which are produced in us on the one hand 
from the spectacle of virtue and vice, and on the 
other hand from our own practice of good or evil, 
that which characterizes, I repeat, these emotions 
or sensations, is that they are mingled with judg- 
ments, and these judgments are the same of which 
I have just spoken to you. In fact, when I per- 
ceive a reasonable and free being doing evil, the 
sight not only displeases me necessarily, but I also 
condemn, I disapprove of him who does the evil, 
and I disapprove of him in different degrees, 
according as he does greater or less evil. Then, 
the whole phenomenon takes the name of indigna- 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 285 

tion. This word indignation represents a mixture 
of something sensible and something intellectual. 

When I am indignant, it is not a simple judgment 
coolly pronounced by reason* We feel that there 
is in the word indignation something more, that 
there is something sensible ; but, on the other hand, 
this word does not alone represent a simple sensible 
action ; we feel that there is a disapprobation im- 
plied which depends upon the intellect. It is a 
word which represents a complex fact— first the 
sensible emotion caused by the sight of vice, and 
then the judgment I pronounce upon him who is 
guilty of the vice. This is the reason that it is not 
a simple sensation or a simple judgment; it is 
something mixed, which bears a special name. It 
is the same with the emotions which are produced 
in us when we ourselves do good or evil ; hence the 
words: satisfaction of having done well and remorse. 
We feel that there is something else besides a pain- 
ful and sensible phenomenon in the word remorse ; 
we feel there is a condemnation pronounced by the 
agent upon himself for what he has done. So that 
in the "case of the satisfaction of having done well, 
there is both an emotion and judgment. A phe- 
nomenon equally complex is produced in us, and 
this complex phenomenon has as its elements, first 
the apreeable emotion produced by the spectacle 



286 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

of good, and secondly the approving judgment 
pronounced upon the agent. 

Such are the phenomena, both intellectual and 
sensible, which accompany the accomplishment of 
good. Now, gentlemen, I shall proceed to add a 
few other considerations which I must touch upon, 
so as to be as little deficient as possible in a subject 
in which I cannot be thorough. I am not deliver- 
ing a course of lectures on morality, I am only 
going over rapidly the results of such a course, so 
as to establish them as the foundation of ethics. 

It is said that ethics has for its aim the deter- 
mination of the law or rule of human conduct. We 
seek a law, and we have reason to seek it ; we are 
not seeking counsels, indications, tokens, which we 
can follow or not, but a law. If it was not a law 
it would no longer be a science ; for there exists in 
the human mind the idea that there are laws for 
every reasonable and free being, and by laws we 
mean precepts which we can follow or not, but 
which at the same time we ought to follow. Evi- 
dently, we can only seek for the law of human 
conduct in its relations with the end of man — that 
is to say, in what is called good. But good is con- 
ceived in different degrees. We call different 
objects of our inclinations good / later, we call that 
toward which our selfishness impels us, good; 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 287 

finally, we conceive what I have called absolute 
good, good in itself, that which is good independ- 
ently of all relation with ourselves, and which can 
create a law. There is nothing in the world more 
simple. What is the distinguishing characteristic 
of law ? It is to bind ; a law which does not bind 
is not a law. You destroy the meaning and accep- 
tation of the w T ord law if you take from the idea 
and the word law the idea of obligation. 

It remains to learn which of these goods has the 
character of obligation. I have just shown you 
that the idea of obligation is attached only to good 
in itself; good in itself is, then, the only one which 
has the legislative character from which can ema- 
nate a law in the true acceptation of the term. 
There is, gentlemen, a necessary connection between 
the idea of good in itself and the idea of obliga- 
tion ; there is a necessary connection between the 
idea of law and the idea of obligation ; two quan- 
tities equal to a third are equal to each other ; the 
idea of good alone, then, can agree with the idea 
of law — that is to say, true good, absolute good, 
good in' itself, is the only one which can create a 
law for human conduct. This is clearer than the 
light of day. 

Gentlemen, it follows from this that every 
imaginable law deserving this name only deserves 
it so far as it embraces within itself, less or more, 



288 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

directly or indirectly, something belonging to good, 
and absolute good. Every law is law only on this 
condition. You will say that there are throughout 
the world a great number of laws ; for instance, the 
laws of procedure, which are entirely arbitrary. 
The human heart, human reason, does not imme- 
diately feel obliged to respect these laws for them- 
selves; for if, in place of a delay of three days, 
four had been determined upon, reason would have 
perceived no difference; we would not feel any 
more bound by a delay of three than of four days ; 
we do not feel ourselves bound by any of these 
delays ; on this ground we can say that these laws 
are not laws. It is true that these laws are not laws 
immediately by themselves, but they become laws 
as soon as they are promulgated by the legitimate 
authority. Now, this legitimate authority, for the 
best of reasons, possesses the right of establishing 
rules. Thus there is always the idea of good 
behind every law truly deserving to be called law ; 
and, tar or near, directly or indirectly, we will 
always see in seeking for good, that the law, what- 
ever it may be, ascends to good in itself. Good 
in itself binds immediately man, the individual, the 
citizen, to certain things toward his fellow beings. 
But to insure the execution of these certain things 
which we owe to our fellow creatures immediately 
in virtue of the law itself of good, there are certain 



tiii;orktical VIEWS. 289 

measures to be taken ; to take these measures we 
must name judges, and choose some authority to be 
charged with reducing them to writing. When 
the end is desired, means are soon found. If we 
wish, as is enjoined immediately by good, that cer- 
tain laws between men should be respected, which 
are the most sacred laws of morality, we must wish 
it to be provided by public authority that those 
men who have bad natures, wicked inclinations, 
should be restrained when they violate these laws. 
This is necessary in order to insure the respect for 
those laws, which are laws immediately, because 
they are the direct emanations of the idea of good. 
Consequently, we are bound, when these laws are 
made, to respect them, even when they seem a 
little absurd ; for there are means to correct the 
absurdity, means which we ought to take, as we 
might otherwise incommode society and cause more 
harm than the arbitrary laws could do. 

There is but one law in the world, the law of 
God ; every law not derived from that is not a 
law, is not obligatory, is not a rule to which we are 
bound to submit. Thus, gentlemen, law, whatever 
may be its nature, whether between men or socie- 
ties, is an emanation of good. The character of 
obligation essential to law, belonging only to the 
idea of good, can only be attached to that which 
participates in the idea of good. 

13 



290 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

Obligation is not the only character of good. It 
has also the characteristic of beauty. I have tried 
to make you comprehend it, and have tried to de- 
fine it for you. Good has other characteristics ; 
all these characteristics are those which the common 
sense of humanity proclaims. 

Gentlemen, I have already told you that abso- 
lute good is nothing else than the end itself of uni- 
versal order, or the creation, and that our particu- 
lar ends are only good because they are the end of 
man; that thus the end of every created being is 
an element of the total end, which is good in itself. 
If this is the case, let it not be said that good, such 
as comes from the definition which I have given of 
it, and from the doctrine I explained to you, that 
good is something relative to man, which would be 
different if man were different. Distinguish well 
in the special end of a being what is relative from 
wdiat is absolute, what is relative from what is not 
arbitrary. What is relative and arbitrary is that 
there should be such an end rather than another. 
Indeed, if a being was organized differently, it 
would have a different end, as the end is nothing 
else than the consequence of the nature of a being; 
but all these ends are not the less, in universal 
order, an element of that order. It is on this 
ground, as soon as it is comprehended, that the end 
of a being becomes obligatory in the eyes of this 



THEORETICAL VIEWS- 291 

being, that in his thoughts it takes all the peculiar 
characteristics of absolute good, that is, the non- 
arbitrary, the objective. 

Gentlemen, in the end established by God, an 
end utterly unknown to our intellect, in creating 
this vast universe, the beginning, limits, almost the 
whole of which we are ignorant — in this end w T ho 
can imagine that there is anything arbitrary ? Is 
it possible not to conceive that this end established 
by God for his works is the consequence of the 
nature of God : that it is nothing else than the ex- 
pression of this nature, that it is 4 God himself ; for 
what ether end could he establish than himself? 
Now, the nature of God is the nature of the only 
necessary existing being. There can be then 
nothing arbitrary in the end proposed by God in 
the creation of the universe. 

This end is unknown to us, and we cannot even 
conjecture what it may be. The order in which 
the whole of nature advances toward this end by 
the multitude of phenomena and beings who pro- 
duce it, this order escapes us ; but what there is 
certain for our reason, is that this end is a good 
end, and that it has nothing arbitrary about it. 
It is then a characteristic of good in itself, to be 
necessary, immutable, eternal, like the nature itself 
of God. If this is the case, all the elements which 
go to produce this definite result are not less neces- 



292 THEORETICAL VIICW3. 

Bnrv than the result itself; and although we can 
easily imagine that instead of being a man we 
could be an entirely different being, it does not fol- 
low that the end of each being is an arbitrary 
thing, and it is on this account that he acts. The 
end of no being is an arbitrary thing ; for the end 
of every being contributes to the end of God, and 
is an indispensable part in universal order. 

Consequently we ought not to say that good is a 
thing which -might be different : good cannot be 
different from what it is. If this is true of good as 
good, it is true of moral good for a stronger rea- 
son ; for it is evident that, whatever may be our 
end, this end being an element of the total end, it 
is our duty to pursue it. There is nothing more 
nor less in this obligation ; there is nothing arbi- 
trary in it; our end might be different; but our 
obligation would remain the same ; it is one, im- 
mutable, identical for all possible intelligent and 
reasonable beings. It is then one of the character- 
istics of good, of good in itself, and of all the ele- 
ments of this good, not to be contingent, not to be 
arbitrary, to be connected with the immutability 
and the eternity of the end of all things, which is 
the nature itself of God. Another characteristic 
of good is that it is preeminently impersonal. 
When I pursue my good as estimated by selfish* 
ness, I pursue it as my own ; my aim is personal 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 293 

and my motive also ; consequently I obey some- 
thing personal, I proceed toward something per- 
sonal. All is personal — aim and motive — whether 
in the selfish or instinctive sphere. But when I 
proceed toward my end because I conceive it good 
in itself, then the object I pursue is not mine. It 
is true that, being free and intelligent, I am charged 
especially with realizing this part of order, but I 
pursue and realize this part of order so far as it is 
a part of order-— so far as it is good in itself and 
independent of me. My motive is impersonal ; if 
I should lose my intelligence and liberty, I would 
no longer comprehend this end nor the nature of 
this end toward which I feel myself obliged, being 
intelligent, to proceed ; but it would be none the 
less what it is, that is an element of absolute good ; 
and that which could realize it would proceed to 
an impersonal end without suspecting it. My end 
being therefore such as ought to be pursued only 
because it forms part of good in itself, when I obey 
the moral motive I obey an impersonal motive and 
I proceed toward an end which is likewise imper- 
sonal ; 'Thus the characteristic of good is imperson- 
ality as well as immutability and absoluteness. 
Gentlemen, these characteristics which I have 
merely pointed out, are characteristics known to 
the whole world. The true law is not made for a 
certain individual, and the interests of a certain 



294 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

individual ; the law is preeminently impersonal, it 
is superior to the individuals subject to it; other- 
wise we could not conceive it as being obligatory. 
The rule which we propose in order to reach an 
end, that our interest counsels us to pursue, has 
not the character of a law ; it is entirely personal, 
it does not bind ; obligation is connected only with 
a precept, a rule, the idea of an impersonal good. 
Impersonality is just as inherent in law as obliga- 
tion, and for this reason, where there is obligation 
there is impersonality, and where there is imper- 
sonality there is obligation. These two charac- 
teristics are inseparable. Law should not be 
arbitrary, that is, capricious : it ought to express 
not what is relatively suitable to such and such an 
individual or such and such a case, but what is 
suitable in itself and to the nature of things. Such 
is the character of the true law. If anything arbi- 
trary slips into a human law, it ought to appear 
only in a law of application, and not in a funda- 
mental law ; for we must distinguish carefully in 
all legislation, the part which is general, the ob- 
ject, the rule, from the executive part which con- 
cerns the practice, that is, the means of peaching 
the end, of realizing the rule. This last part 
is always more or less arbitrary ; for although 
we endeavor to deduce the practice from the 
principle, it cannot be deduced so strictly as to 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 295 

prevent some things from slipping in, the absolute 
necessity of which is not evident ; as we cannot 
determine precisely all the cases, w T e choose an 
ordinance embracing the largest number of them. 
Thus, to return to the Code of Procedure, it ap- 
pears to be arbitrary. When, however, we seek the 
motive of its rules, we see that they have been cal- 
culated in order to guaranty in the surest way the 
respect for the great principles of our legislation. 

You see how all that we said of good, and all the 
characteristics found in it, harmonize with the cha- 
racteristics which common sense attributes to law ; 
confirming the fact that good is the only law and 
that all the others emanate necessarily from it. 
Another thing which I have dwelt upon very often, 
and which I would like to develop with a great 
deal of detail if I had the time, is the harmony, so 
many times noticed in these lectures, of the differ- 
ent motives and the different alms of human con- 
duct. The reason for which the end of instinct, 
the end of selfishness and the moral end coincide, 
has not been given, although almost all philoso- 
phers 'agree in recognizing the harmony of these 
three ends. This has arisen from the fact that a 
precise and completely true idea of what is repre- 
sented by the word good has not been formed. 
From the moment that we comprehend that the 
good of a being is his end, wc comprehend perfect- 



296 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

ly how and why instinct in this being must from 
the very first impel him toward his end ; how self- 
ishness, which is only a rational instinct, must im- 
pel him for a still stronger reason ; and how con- 
sequently there is and there must be a coincidence 
between the instinctive, the selfish and the moral 
good. But when, instead of conceiving good as 
an end — absolute good as the end of creation, the 
good of each individual as the end of his nature — 
an idea approaching to or deviating from this more 
or less is formed, we cannot see distinctly the rea- 
son of the instinctive, the selfish and the moral 
motives. A being being given, as the nature of 
this being, and the end for which it was created, 
result from the being, we comprehend immediately 
that if this nature is called to live and to develop 
itself, although there is a considerable interval be- 
tween its impetuous movement and the movement 
of reason, it begins to aspire from the commence- 
ment, blindly of course, to that for which it was 
created : this blind aspiration of a nature toward 
the end for which it was created, is instinct. If 
you now introduce into this nature the faculty of 
comprehension, this faculty, seeking to find out 
toward w^hat all these instincts proceed, finding 
that the being is agreeably affected when its in- 
stincts attain their aim, and disagreeably w\hen 
they do not, it commences to form a general idea 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 297 

of the end toward which the instincts tend ; this is 
selfish good. You see that, as there can he nothing 
in the result of this inquiry except what has been 
furnished by instinct, the result of this inquiry 
must point out, as the end and as good, that tow- 
ard which these instincts advance blindly. So that 
you see personal good is nothing else than instinc- 
tive good comprehended. Now, instinctive good 
being only the true good of our nature, toward 
which it blindly aspires, you see that there must 
be a relation between the two, one of which 
is good comprehended by reason : for reason dis- 
covers nothing more than that toward which in- 
stinct impels us, and is precisely that for which our 
nature was made. You also find that our end is 
an element of the absolute end, of absolute good. 
Reason tells us not only that instinct impels us in 
fact toward this end, not only that empirical reason 
impels us toward it by calculation ; but that we 
ought to advance toward it ; for this end, which is 
personal to us, has one side absolute, one side by 
which it appears to us an element of what is good 
in itself; we ought therefore to proceed toward it 
because it is our end, and because our end is an 
element of the absolute end. You perceive the 
reason of the coincidence of all these ends — of all 
these motives. It is not only important to estab- 
lish this coincidence, as all philosophic minds have 

13* 



298 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

done, but to explain it, as this puts an end to the 
exaggerations into which people have fallen, against 
passion on the one hand, against selfishness and 
personal interest on the other. The difficulty of all 
moralists who have not comprehended this har- 
mony, has been to reconcile the judgments of com- 
mon sense upon passion and interest with the con- 
sequences of their systems. Indeed, not taking an 
account of the reasons of this coincidence, they 
were obliged to declare one of these ends good and 
to condemn the others. They condemned abso- 
lutely both the passionate and selfish ends, that is, 
the end toward which both our instincts and self- 
ishness impel us. Yet common sense does not con- 
demn in the least the pursuit of the personal end ; 
it condemns it so little, that it condemns men who 
act imprudently, w T ho imprudently sacrifice their 
own happiness, who take no care— in a word, pro- 
digals, the rash. There are a great many vices 
which, in the eyes of common sense, have impru- 
dence as their principle, that is, an absence of 
selfishness, of interest well understood. Common 
sense condemns all this ; yet moralists, in virtue of 
their systems, are obliged to condemn all inquiry 
into personal good. There is, however, a branch 
of morality, which is the investigation itself of per- 
sonal interest ; only there is no morality in the 
conduct which proceeds to a personal end, so long 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 299 

as it proceeds toward it in view of the person only. 
In order that there should be morality in this con- 
duct, the relation of personal and absolute good 
must be understood — that is, the intrinsic goodness 
of personal good, independently of the person, 
must be comprehended. There is a difference in 
the motives, but the views are the same. 

Such are some of the accessory points about 
which I am very glad to have spoken, as I neglected 
them somewhat while taken up chiefly with the 
determination of the true notion of good. JSTow I 
can in a very few words, and in a very rapid way, 
speak again of the series of conceptions which lead 
to the notion of good, such as I understand it. 
There is a great difference between the order in 
which these different conceptions appear to us and 
the order in which we are obliged to arrange them 
when we wish to place first that which is first 
logically and to place second that which is second 
logically, and so forth. In a word, there is a great 
difference between the order of the appearance of 
these different conceptions and the order in which 
they should be logically arranged in order to form 
a system. I will go over them rapidly in the 
logical order — that is, in the synthetical order. 

The fundamental conception, speaking logically, 
which perhaps appears to us last in the psycho- 
logical order, is the conception that everything has 



300 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

an end, and that consequently the whole creation 
lias an end. That this end is good in itself — that is 
to say, is the good in itself — is an idea inseparable 
from the end. As soon as we conceive that every- 
thing lias an end, we conceive that this end is the 
good itself. When we seek to account for this end, 
we also conceive, as I said a little while ago, that it 
can only be the consequence itself of the necessary, 
immutable nature of God ; for God cannot proceed 
to an end contradictory to his nature ; he can have 
no other end than himself, and therefore all that 
can be said of the nature of God can be said of the 
end established by him in his works. In a word, 
necessity, immutability, absence of everything arbi- 
trary, can be spoken of in regard to good in itself, 
which is the end of all things and God himself. 

We also conceive that the law by which all that 
exists and will exist in the creation, tends to the 
end established by God, constitutes universal order, 
and that this order participates in all the charac- 
teristics of the end of God ; that is to say, if the 
end is good, order is good ; if the end is eternal and 
immutable, order is eternal and immutable ; there 
is nothing arbitrary in it, any more thau in the 
nature of God. 

By the side of these two conceptions another is 
immediately produced ; it is, that the whole having 
an end, all the parts of the whole contribute to this 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 301 

end, and that the ends of each of these parts are 
only an element, of which the total end ought to be 
the resultant. If this is the case, the character of 
absolute goodness belonging to the end of God 
ought to be extended to each of the particular ends 
and to each of the particular orders of which this 
absolute end and order are only resultants, which 
makes these ends sacred. 

A fourth conception is that each nature has been 
adapted to its end, and that the end of a nature is 
nothing else than the consequence of the organiza- 
tion itself of the nature. This idea is always 
necessary for our reason ; it is very important in 
science, because it discovers the means of deter- 
mining scientifically the end of every being whose 
nature can be known to us. These absolute, uni- 
versal conceptions, w^hich embrace the whole, lead 
(when we observe things or the portion of things 
we can see and know) to two classes — first, to 
beings who are intelligent and free ; and secondly, 
to beings which are neither intelligent nor free. A 
being which is not intelligent appears to us as not 
being able to comprehend its end, and as not hav- 
ing the power or the choice to proceed or not to 
proceed toward its end ; it appears to us, then, as 
not being charged bv the Creator with the accom- 
plishment of its end, and as not being responsible 
for its accomplishment; it appears to us also as 



302 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

deserving no praise in proceeding toward its end, 
and as not being able to deserve any praise. Such, 
gentlemen, are the characteristics of those kinds of 
beings called by us things, which we distinguish 
from that other class of beings called by us persons. 
The free beings, on the other hand, being free, can 
advance or not to their end ; being intelligent, they 
can accomplish it. They appear to us, conse- 
quently, as if charged to realize in themselves their 
end, and in this way they appear to us as an ele- 
ment of absolute good, as if responsible for the 
accomplishment of this end, as if deserving of 
praise when they reach it and deserving blame 
w\hen they do not. 

It cannot be said that the liberty accorded to 
these beings is absolute ; by the wisdom of God it 
has been inclosed, so to speak, as observation assures 
us, within certain limits, which leave considerable 
play to liberty, but not enough to disturb the 
immutable designs of Providence. Gentlemen, 
when we study man, who is for us the type of the 
intelligent and free beings, we notice what amazing 
precautions have been taken by the Creator to 
prevent the free being from deviating too much 
from the road of his destiny. In fact, there is not 
a motive in him which does not impel him toward 
his end. Propensity or instinct impels him toward 
it ; selfishness leads him ; the moral motive enjoins 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 303 

him to advance. It is very difficult for him, being 
subject to motives all* of which impel him toward 
this end, not to advance or to go much out of the 
way. The most important thing that human liberty 
can do in the pursuit of the end, is to advance 
toward it as the end, or advance toward it by other 
motives ; but whether human liberty advances 
because it is the end, the good, or advances from 
instinct, from personal interest, it advances toward 
this end continually ; it is not given to a human 
creature to advance more or less toward the end for 
which he has been created. Man is chained to the 
pursuit of his end by all the bonds of passion, 
selfishness and morality. We do not discover in 
ourselves a single motive which tends to make us 
deviate from this end ; and on the other hand, when 
we go astray in the pursuit of our true end through 
our liberty, we are called back incessantly by all 
the punishments which the eternal order of things, 
in the midst of which we are called to develop our- 
selves, inflicts upon him who deviates from his path 
to enter into one not his. The true way of suffering 
is to leave the road of one's destiny; immediate 
punishments, which spring from the order of things, 
fall upon every man who deviates from this road, 
and in proportion as he deviates more or less. It is 
this, gentlemen, which makes it difficult for a man 
to deviate much from his end, and this is the reason 



304 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

that I Lave always maintained, and always will 
maintain, that the man whcf has the least accom- 
plished his end has still accomplished it to a very 
great degree ; that the greatest criminal, the most 
immoral man, has exercised to a certain degree — 
to a pretty high degree — his human personality, and 
that in quitting this life, however badly he may 
have passed it, he is entirely different from what lie 
was when he entered it, he is a creature resembling 
God, even with the crimes he has committed. He 
has deliberated, he has chosen, he has been deceived, 
but he has exercised his high faculties ; he was a 
thing, he has become a person ; he has created 
himself. Life is useless to no one, it is useful to 
every human creature. We must judge men with 
very great charity, as God himself does, who sees 
the human weaknesses and at the same time sees 
the end toward which all advance. 

Such are the two classes we can distinguish : the 
beings which are not free, which advance fatally 
toward their end, and the beings to whom it is 
given to reach theirs with intelligence and liberty. 
The latter become persons, the first remain things. 

We call the accomplishment of their end by free 
and intelligent beings moral good, and the non- 
accomplishment of their end moral evil, while the 
words order and disorder are reserved to designate 
the accomplishment of their end by beings which 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 305 

have neither liberty nor intelligence. You will 
immediately understand that disorder in beings 
which advance fatally toward their end is not pos- 
sible. Also, when it is created in this world, it is 
always by a cause foreign to the nature of the 
being. 

I should have noticed, as I think I have done in 
some of my lectures, that man causes much disor- 
der in this world, but I shall demonstrate a little 
later that he has the right to do so. Again, we 
must notice that the order in this world (which 
must not be taken for absolute order, but as a link 
in the chain of existences which fill space and will 
fill it in future) is such that no destiny can be com- 
pletely accomplished here, that all destinies limit 
each other. Evil in this world is only the imper- 
fection of good. Now, there is an order of things 
which is peculiar to this world, and which, among 
a thousand other indications, testifies that the world 
is only a point in the creation, only a transitory 
world, not containing the ideal of absolute and per- 
fect order. 

There* is, gentlemen, a multitude of mysteries 
in the moral conceptions. The absolute good, or 
the definitive end of all things, or the thought of 
God in the creation, escapes us completely. And, 
in fact, space is infinite ; the creation fills space ; 
we are but a feeble point of created things, we can 



306 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

therefore have no idea of the whole, and we must 
have an idea of the whole to rise to the idea of the 
end. Again, time is infinite, and in the bosom of 
this infinite time a succession of worlds and crea- 
tions must flow on indefinitely. Now, we are but 
a point, a small point, in duration ; we cannot then 
comprehend the creation under the relation of dura- 
tion any more than under the relation of space. 
This is the reason that the absolute end of things 
or absolute good escapes us ; but we have the idea 
that there is an end, and the certainty that it is 
good, although we do not know in what this end 
consists, and consequently in what good consists. 
This end exists, it is good, this is what we are cer- 
tain of; and as we are certain secondly that nothing 
in this world can be foreign to this end, and that 
every particular end, whatever it may be, is an ele- 
ment of this absolute end, we are called to respect, 
as an element of absolute good, every particular 
end that we know ; and our duty is limited to this ; 
it is limited, as I have said, to respect the elements 
of good known to us, no matter how few they may 
be ; even when we comprehend nothing of absolute 
good, we are sure that this absolute good exists, 
and that the particular ends known to us are the 
elements of this absolute good, so that for us they 
bear all the characteristics of absolute good, as if 
we knew it. 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 307 

Such is the true position in which we are. The 
creation escapes us, and consequently its end. 
When a thought of the creation comes to us, and 
consequently a portion of the ends of creation, 
these ends are sacred for us, we ought to respect 
them. 

This, gentlemen, is all that is mysterious in the 
moral conceptions, or in the conceptions which rise 
to the moral conception. In descending from the 
universal creation (embracing the whole creation 
and God himself) to the order of this world, to the 
order of man, we often discover things that are 
clearer than the light of day. Man conceives that 
he has an end ; he knows that he is free and intelli- 
gent ; he feels that he is charged with fulfilling this 
end for which he is responsible ; he feels that he 
deserves praise if the accomplishment takes place 
through him, or deserving of blame if it does not 
take place. But he finds very soon that it is impos- 
sible for him to attain his end completely, that 
everything has been so arranged in this world that 
he cannot attain to all truth conceived by his intel- 
ligence ,and for which he was created, nor to that 
universal union w T ith everything existing — with 
everything like ourselves (which is one of the ends 
of our nature), nor to any of the other ends for 
which our nature was created. From which it is 



308 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

clear to him that it is not the design of God in the 
present creation that man should reach his absolute 
end, such as results from his nature. There is one 
good, however, in this world, completely in the 
power of man, no matter in what way he may have 
been educated, or in what situation he may be 
placed. This good is moral good, consisting, in 
each circumstance, in attaining one's destiny as far 
as possible and as far as it is comprehended. 
Moreover, it is evident to man that in seeking this 
moral good he becomes praiseworthy — worthy of a 
better destiny, that Ire becomes a better person, 
while he develops in himself all the elements of 
personality. Besides, it is clear to him that an 
order of things in which he could have accom- 
plished the whole of his destiny without effort 
would not have developed in him that marvel 
called the person, which makes him like God. 
God is then justified in our minds in the temporary 
order of this world. The reason of this transitory 
order is given us. It is proved to us even to 
demonstration that moral good is our true end in 
the present life. Then the duties of man toward 
himself are ascertained, and the traditions, of ethics 
are fixed, such being the principle. This principle 
is clearer than the light of day. I know of nothing 
more clearly demonstrated, more evident, and I 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. * 309 

will endeavor to carry this branch of morality — 
personal morality — to the highest degree of scien- 
tific evidence possible. 

Undoubtedly the end of free beings is an element 
of good in itself; but if there were no other beings, 
man would be bound to honor and respect the free 
development of all tilings surrounding him — trees, 
plants, animals — absolutely as he is bound to 
respect the free development of his fellow crea- 
tures. Two circumstances, however, strike us in 
looking at things ; the first is, that things being 
neither free nor intelligent, are not at all charged 
with or responsible for the accomplishment of their 
destiny ; they are merely instruments in the hands 
of God. In the first place, there is, then, no injus- 
tice in violating the order of these things. In the 
second place (and this is of great importance) there 
is a conflict in the organization and arrangement 
of this world — a perpetual conflict between the order 
of things and the order of man. Js"ow, bound and 
obliged as I am by my organization to accomplish 
my order, I find myself in presence of beings that 
are not 'charged with the accomplishment of their 
order or end, that are not bound to it, that are but 
an instrument in the hands of God. If there is a 
conflict between these two orders, if one can only 
be realized on the condition that the other be 
destroyed, modified or altered, I, who am charged 



310 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

with the accomplishment of my order, I, who find 
myself in presence of creatures not responsible — 
simple instruments in the hands of God — I have all 
the rights of this world. If God had determined 
that the ends of those things should be accom- 
plished strictly, he w r ould have arranged the crea- 
tion in such a manner that this order would have 
been as sacred to me as the order of my fellow 
beings, or as inaccessible as the planets. Provi- 
dence would have provided for it, if He had not 
willed that we should violate their order for the 
profit of our own. It is therefore proved to me 
that I can make use of things and turn them from 
their destiny for the accomplishment of my own. 
It is for this reason that 1 kill animals, that I cut 
short a multitude of destinies while in the .act of 
accomplishment, that I break in, for the advance- 
ment of my own order, upon the order of the 
material creation surrounding me, of the blind 
creation surrounding me. While in presence of my 
fellow beings, charged like myself with the accom- 
plishment of their destiny, this order is sacred for 
me; I cannot disturb it for my own advantage. 
Such are the foundations of the w T hole reason of our 
conduct toward others. In the light of this princi- 
ple — the notion of good— I see all the principles 
established in advance from which are to be 
derived the rules of human conduct in all the 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 311 

different branches of natural right and morality. 
It is too late to go over them again ; I suppress them 
entirely; but I was necessitated to recapitulate the 
whole of the doctrines, in order to leave the im- 
pression with you of what will serve for a founda- 
tion for the different branches of ethics which I 
shall approach hereafter. 



LECTURE IX. 

THEORETICAL VIEWS CONTINUED. 

We have now come, gentlemen, to the most diffi- 
cult part of our task. We have finally reached the 
end toward which we have constantly advanced 
from the beginning of these lectures, each of which 
brought us nearer. The question was to determine 
the idea of good, and we had to choose between 
two ways : one more direct, which was to seek 
immediately for the solution of the problem ; the 
other safer, which was to demand in the first place 
the solution from philosophical systems, but, if they 
did not give it to us, to seek it for ourselves. The 
latter seemed to us to be the one to be preferred ; 
we followed it. We have, therefore, gone over all 
the philosophical doctrines on the question, and we 
have criticised them successively. At the outset 
we saw that they were divided into two classes : 
those which deny the idea of good expressly or 
impliedly and those which recognize if. We had 
first to ascertain whether the former were right ; 

for if they were, our inquiry would have been fruit- 

" 8ia 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 313 

less, as we would have pursued the determination 
of a chimerical idea. We therefore devoted our- 
selves to an examination, and it convinced us that 
these doctrines could not be sustained, and that the 
negation of the idea of good was in them, only the 
consequence of error. Consoled by this doubt, we 
then continued our review, and, passing to the doc- 
trines which admit the idea of good and are obliged 
to determine it, we demanded of them the solution 
of the problem. Instead of one solution they pre- 
sented three to us, and it could not be otherwise ; 
since our nature can yield to three motives and 
aspire to three ends of action, it was inevitable that 
each of these ends should be considered by some 
philosopher as containing in itself and representing 
the true idea of good. It remained for us to learn 
which of them contains it and represents it truth- 
fully. In order to discover the true idea of good, 
we examined the three solutions and the systems 
which proposed and defended them. This exam- 
ination led us to reject two of those solutions, the 
solution of the selfish systems and the solution of 
the instinctive systems, and to recognize the fact 
that the idea of good cannot be solved either in the 
greatest satisfaction of our tendencies as the first 
maintain, or in the particular object of the good of 
these tendencies as the second maintain. It fol- 
lows, then, that this idea can only be met with in 

14 



314 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

the third end in view of which we can act — an end 
avowed by reason which it calls good, and toward 
which we are carried not by prudence or desire, 
but by obligation. This is recognized with com- 
mon accord by all the rational systems, and we 
recognize it also. But it is not enough to establish 
the fact that the good conceived by reason, being 
the only one which is absolutely conceived and 
which obliges us, is for that reason the only one 
which satisfies the condition of the problem ; we 
must go still further and determine in what this 
good consists. 

The rational systems understood this difficulty ; 
we have seen them in harmony in regard to the 
end, but divided in regard to the idea which should 
be formed of it. Some maintain that the idea of 
good is irreducible and cannot be defined ; others 
maintain that it can be resolved into a clearer idea. 
In seeking this idea, it w^as necessary to follow the 
rational doctrines in this important debate, which 
we have done. Examining, with Price and the 
Scotch school, the idea that good is indeterminable, 
we have seen that the idea is inadmissible, if it is 
true that good is an end distinct from actions, and 
in relation to which we judge them good or bad ; 
for if Price's doctrine was true, we could not pro- 
nounce this judgment. This doctrine draws after 
it necessarily the negation of good as an external 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 315 

end and the affirmation that it is only a simple 
quality of actions perceived immediately in them, 
like color and form in bodies : an opinion which 
all those who maintained that good is indefinable 
have really professed, but which it is impossible 
to admit, for it confounds two distinct things — 
moral good and good in itself, and cannot be recon- 
ciled with the deliberations of the conscience, the 
discussion which morality excites, and the pro- 
gressive march which it has followed in its develop- 
ments. The doctrine which denies that good can 
be defined being thus condemned with that class 
of rational systems maintaining it, it only remained 
for us to ask the definition of those who have be- 
lieved that it could be found, and who sought for 
it. We have, therefore, questioned several of those 
systems, and examined the ideas by which they 
attempted to translate the idea of good. None satis- 
fied us, because none seemed to us to satisfy the 
double condition which such an idea ought to ful- 
fill, of being recognized by the common conscience 
as that which it sees confusedly under the word 
goody and of coinciding in such a way with the 
idea represented by this word, that it comprehends 
neither more nor less, and that we can substitute 
imperceptibly one for the other in all possible ap- 
plications. Kant's theory, which substitutes for 
the distinction of good a sign by the means of 



316 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

which we can recognize it, appears to ns to be 
only an ingenious way of escaping the difficulty 
without solving it. 

Such, gentlemen, is the road we have passed 
over, and such are the results given us by the his- 
tory of philosophy strictly questioned. These re- 
sults are considerable, although not containing the 
definition we are seeking. A great number of 
truths, that we were ignorant of, are now perfectly 
known and proved. We know that none of the 
philosophical systems which imply the negation 
of the idea of good has a foundation, and we are, 
therefore, reassured of the reality of this idea made 
obscure and doubtful by these systems. And as 
to the determination itself of this idea, the review 
we have made of the sj'stems that have attempted 
it, revealed to us all the mistakes, all the confusion 
into which the human mind can fall while in the 
pursuit. True good can be confounded either with 
the particular end of some instinct, or with the 
more general but wholly personal end of interest 
well understood. We have met with great systems 
which have fallen into this double error, we have 
examined them thoroughly, and we know that 
neither the good of the instinct, nor the good of 
selfishness is good in itself. Again, this true good 
can be confounded with moral good, that is, with 
the good in acts, which is but the realization of it ; 



THEORETICAL VIEWS. 317 

we have also found upon our path doctrines which 
erected this confusion into a system, and we have 
proved its insufficiency and error. Owing to this 
confusion, it was supposed and maintained that 
good is indefinable. Philosophers were found to 
represent this error, and we refuted them. With- 
out denying that good is definable, it was denied 
that it was useful to define it, and it was enough, 
in order to recognize it, to know the sign of the 
obligation inseparably attached to it ; we com- 
bated that definition in Kant, which may be given, 
but which does not at all satisfy the human mind. 
Finally, gentlemen, besides the doctrines which 
deny good, besides those which seek it where it 
cannot be found ; besides those which not seeking 
it where it is, maintain either that it cannot be de- 
fined or that it is superfluous to attempt it, we can, 
while seeking it where it is or in attempting to 
define it, resolve it into ideas which have an ap- 
parent identity with it, but which are, neverthe- 
less, not the true ideas. These ideas have been 
given us by history in the succession of systems, 
the different mistakes of which we have shown you, 
and we know that they do not contain the defini- 
tion we are seeking. We have thus arrived by 
the road of history as near as possible to the solu- 
tion of the great problem we proposed at the begin- 
ning. All possible errors are removed, the true 



318 THEORETICAL VIEWS. 

difficulty is established, defined, circumscribed ; 
we know precisely on what conditions we can dis- 
cover the solution, and by what signs we will be 
able to recognize it. It only remains for us to 
attack and vanquish the difficulty if possible. Such, 
gentlemen, is what we have done and to what we 
have been led. It was necessary, before quitting 
the historical and entering the dogmatical part, to 
review once more the road already passed over. 
You will pardon these frequent returns to the past 
at each new step we take ; insupportable in a book, 
they are indispensable in a course of lectures given 
orally, at long intervals, and leaving fugitive im- 
pressions in the mind. This shall be the last. We 
now stand in presence of the problem, we shall pro- 
ceed to its solution. The historian disappears, the 
philosopher succeeds. Be kind enough to accord 
to the latter the indulgence and attention never 
refused to the former. 



FINIS. 



lay 15 1C 



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Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Dec. 2004 

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